


Six hours; will the real Hermione please stand up?

by ScarliteVendetta



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bellamione - Freeform, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2019-10-12 07:23:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 75,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17463137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScarliteVendetta/pseuds/ScarliteVendetta
Summary: This is a dark tale of true love and corruption.What if your enemy turns out to be the one you really need to be with?What if your true love is making all the mistakes you regret making?This story takes place in Order of the phoenix, starting right at the scene in Malfoy manor, it's canon up until that moment.I guess all the characters are pretty much ooc, but it's for a good reason.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my take on Bellamione. I guess I let my imagination run wild and I hope it doesn't put too many people off. I really tried my best at making this all sweet and cuddly with extra rainbows, but along the line something went wrong and things just ran away from me. 
> 
> Damn these characters and their free will.
> 
> True it starts out a bit dubcon but things will start looking up soon!
> 
> pinky promise to update every Friday and Tuesday
> 
> Please read and review, I will be eternally grateful :)

Apparently it only takes a virus six hours to overtake one completely. Body and mind. A virus or an addiction, whatever you like to call it, the point is: I was fine and then six hours flew by and I was lost. Lost to the world, my cause and myself. Unrecognisably transformed. It happened without my consent, I didn’t want it to happen, nor did I really allow it to. By the time I realised what was happening to me it was too late. It was done. I was gone and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. Nothing I wanted to do about it. I still had full control over my body, yet somehow I just didn’t want anything of what I had wanted before those bleeding six hours passed and turned everything upside down.

I used to think I was crazy, but I wasn’t. High spirited, eccentric, impulsive, yes, not crazy. It only took me going actually insane to realise that I had been fine before. Maybe a little unhinged, definitely far off the beaten path, but not as mad as people claimed. Being insane is losing control of your mind, of your thoughts, of yourself. That happened to me. Mind you, not during my prolonged weekend stay in the world’s most horrifying prison, but right here where freedom reigns and life is fucking peachy all the time.

The irony isn’t lost on me. No one ever dared to call me mad to my face but I’ve heard the whispers. I I was said to be a nutter, totally bonkers, demented, daft, batshit, off the trolley, touched in the head, nutty as a fruitcake, a few sandwiches short or a picnic. “Look the other way children, leave the crazy lady be, before you look at her wrongly and she’ll gauge your eyes out because the voices in her head tell her to.” I’ve heard it all and it never bothered me. I took it as a compliment of sorts. I was unpredictable, frightening, I didn’t care much for the things most care a lot for. So I skipped and giggled and acted like a child because it was fun and it worked. It served my cause, I served him and I didn’t have to care about my reputation as long as I was deadly, sufficiently skilled to further the cause and unpredictable enough to not end up back in Azkaban. My reputation served me well.

For the longest time I felt invincible, no I didn’t just feel it. I was invincible cause nothing could harm me. I understood the chance of my side losing was rather big, but I didn’t worry about that. Everything was just fine as long as I was free to breathe in my own air and stand outside unchained. Everything bad had already happened to me, and honestly a lot of it I had brought on myself. I foolishly truly believed nothing could bring me down. I knew I could withstand all the pain anyone could possibly throw my way. And if life somehow became unbearable I could always just pop my clogs. Kick the bucket for the good cause. Lay down with my lord, bite the dust.

I recognized the girl as soon as the snatchers brought her and her friends in. She was the mudblood. The little know it all that liked to hang around Potty and the Weasel so much she apparently had decided to take a little camping trip away from Hogwarts. Now I don’t know how muggle parents feel about their female spawn skipping school to share a tent with two boys, but that was certainly something my father wouldn’t have taken kindly to. I remember thinking it was a ballsy move when I looked at her. I remembered asking myself what was so special about her that two hormone driven boys were willing to participate in a love triangle, but that was before I saw her in the flesh.

I had seen her before of course, at the ministry, the day I killed my cousin. She’d been a mousy girl then, small with too much hair to even properly see her face, not that I paid much attention. I’d only just been freed and honestly I was too caught up in the excitement of fighting and running around unleashed to take more than one look at the girl.

This time I did a double take.

She was feisty, struggling against the greasy moron that held her captive, and running her mouth. She was trying to talk her way out of her predicament. She flushed with anger, not a trace of fear visible on that delectable face. She looked like a proper English rose, high cheekbones, pink skin and rosy lips. Her golden brown hair was still a little untamed but nowhere near as bushy as it once was, it adorned her face beautifully and brought out her eyes that almost perfectly matched the colour of it. She had blossomed into a fine young woman.  
I caught myself in time. Started paying attention to the conversation going on before anyone had to remind me to not just stand there and stare at the girl the way a cat might stare at a ball of yarn that’s dangled in front of its face. I composed myself, things escalated quickly and soon I found myself alone with her. For once I was grateful my fellow death eaters were such squeamish little bastards. They all made different excuses, but in truth none of them wanted to be around to witness what crazy old Bella might do to the poor little mudblood.

Just because we were alone didn’t mean the girl became any less spirited. She stood in front of me and called me demented right to my face. I silently listened to more of her uninspired insults for a while, taking in her image, making a mental picture. This was Hermione before pain. I wanted to torture her. I obviously had to, because I had to ask her about the sword, but quite frankly the whole sword business was an afterthought. I wanted to wreck her body with pain and then patch her up only to cause her more pain. I had done it a thousand times before to a thousand people, but never to her. That made all the difference.

Not that she was special, she wasn’t. She was pretty yes, and brave, but lots of people start out brave and lots of people are pretty. I wanted to torture her because I was bored. I felt dead inside. Life on the outside wasn’t shaping up to be all that mind blowingly interesting. A crucio here an avada kedavra there, that was what my life was reduced to. That was the role I played in this war, the part I had committed to such a long time ago.

It took no effort at all to point my wand at the girl in front of me and yell crucio. She fell to the ground immediately and started writhing, screams falling from her pretty lips so loud I had to cover my ears. I watched her body move on its own. I knew exactly what it was like to lose control over yourself so completely, and I’ve cruicod enough people in my life to know that not everyone responds in the same way. There’s obviously pain and involuntary movement, but some people are dancers and others tinmen. She was a ballerina. Even in excruciating pain she was gloriously graceful. A joy to watch, so to speak, and as her screams died down a little, the way they tend to do when one is exposed to prolonged pain, it was like she was singing to me. She performed heart warmingly, I smiled and took a couple more steps in her direction.

I forgot about the questions I was supposed to ask her, the reason she was even there. I forgot about the war and everything else. My mind cleared itself completely as I stared at the squirming body at my feet, drinking in the girly screams, and watching the light of the chandelier reflect on her wildly moving curls. The light making her medium brown hair look golden. I was generally enjoying the beauty of her pain, the way I had done so often before.

I don’t know if I was born a sadist, made into one or simply adapted my needs to the circumstances of my life. What I do know is that, in spite of my naturally cheery disposition, I’m not one to stop and smell the roses. Yet that is exactly what I found myself doing that day. The moment I became aware of it I lifted the curse that had probably already gone on too long for my purposes.

So long that it was likely that the girl below me had already vacated her mind.

She stopped writhing, her screams turned into rather sensual sounding moans and suddenly it was not hard to imagine what it would be like to make her moan for entirely different reasons. That pissed me off endlessly so I tapped my foot on the ground impatiently and counted slowly back from 100 before I hit her with another crucio. Right on cue her wails became unbearably loud all over again and I continued watching for just a few seconds. I knew full well that even if she was strong enough to make it through that first round, she wouldn’t be able to endure much more of that. I waved the curse away grudgingly and stared at the now totally wrecked heap of girl at my feet.

Her face was red, tear streaked this time and she’d bitten her own lips till they bled. The position she was lying in was strange, mangled, but I was pretty sure no bones were broken. She was still occasionally moving, the remnants of the curse making her so sensitive even the breeze could make her jolt. I thought of healing her, to make the pain go away but decided against it. I still had questions to ask and this was only the beginning of our time together. I wouldn’t start building her up until she had totally broken down.

On impulse I threw myself on top of her, which made her cry out. I pressed my forehead against hers and groaned in delight when I felt her body right there, below me. Soft, warm, pliable, defenceless. It had been so very long, too long in fact. I forgot myself for a moment and got lost in the kind of comfort that only comes from having another human body pressed up against you. I closed my eyes for a few short moments and stopped to smell the proverbial roses for a second time that day. I knew that this wasn’t normal, not even for me, that this wasn’t how any of this was supposed to go down but I couldn’t help myself. I pressed pause on my interrogation to fully take in the sensation of her body against mine. It was such an uncommon luxury that I barely managed to repress a shiver. I held my breath and when I had to start breathing again I composed myself and finally started questioning her.

“Where did you get the sword? Did you get into my vault? How did you get into my vault, what else did you take?” I repeated the same questions over and over.

She still had her wits about her although her answers didn’t make much sense and were less than informative.

She looked into my eyes and showed me how scared she was, scared but brave enough to look. There was fear and disgust and a lot of that stupid Gryffindor bravery. I knew she wasn’t going to tell me anything useful. I could have easily used legilimency to take a peek in her undoubtedly unguarded mind but what would be the fun in that? That would be cheating. I stared into that stubborn brown and more and more disgust shone through. That made me angry. I did not deserve to be looked at that way by her. I considered myself a force to be reckoned with, not something akin to a dog turd you slip on in the street. It bothered me that this girl was looking at me that way.

It shouldn’t have bothered me but it did. I can be petty sometimes. She was lying there like the perfect golden haired martyr for her cause, all unearned bravery and heroism. Graceful in her predicament, young and beautiful, and here I was, old, and used up, filthy. I used to be just like her but time had eaten up all of my grace, all of my beauty and most of my humanity. Nobody looked at me the way I couldn’t help but look at her, not any more. That part of my life was behind me. I was a tool. A thing to be used and discarded when the time came. A woman equally feared and mocked. Scary Bella, crazy Bella. “Try to stay on your aunt’s good side, Draco dear, she’s had a hard life.” Not she has a hard life but she’s had. Even my sister knew my life was over. I was done for. I was something to be pitied and/or feared. A once favoured toy that had broken, a knife that was now blunt and useless. And, if this war ever ended, I had no doubt I’d become even more useless, even more unwanted, no matter the outcome.

“You think you have a hard life?” I whispered to the girl. “Welcome to my world, love.”

Her eyes grew large and I giggled to drive the self pity away. I straightened my spine and clamped my thighs around her waist, locking her in place, reached up under my skirt and pulled the dagger out of my garter.

“Meet my little friend, mudblood filth.” I gave her my best grin and dangled the knife in front of her face. She paled.

I know, I know. How un- pure-blooded of me to choose to maim the girl manually. Naturally I know a lot of dark spells that can do a lot worse than cut someone open, or even cut a person open in multiple places with the single flick of a wand, but I prefer the dramatic poetry of using my knife. There is something uniquely satisfying about slicing through living human skin and watching the blood rise up slowly. It’s a lot slower and less efficient but in my opinion anticipation is half the torture. Besides, my dagger was well enhanced, so whatever I decided to adorn her with would stay with her for a long time.

I took her left wrist firmly in my right hand and stretched her arm out. Her skin was the perfect canvas, pale, delicate, not a single mark. I didn’t know I was going to carve her definition into her until I pressed the tip of my dagger against her skin, pierced through the surface and wrote an M. She struggled a little bit and cried a lot. I deliberately took it slow, watching the blood well up and turn my clumsy handwriting into art. It felt so good. I could precisely imagine the look on her face when she found out not a healing spell in the world could rid her of my handiwork.

She squeaked and screamed, sputtered, moaned and grunted and I must admit her variety of tortured sounds was a delight to me.

It was almost as if I could taste her screams, like they moved through my body and changed me. It felt so strange, like a small fire was lit on the inside. Like I was drowning in her pain and glowing at the same time. I had severe issues concentrating on what I was doing and as a result the second O turned out quite a bit bigger than the first one, not that it mattered. I wasn’t exactly trying to beautify her. I wanted to mark her, remind her of who she was, remind myself. I gathered my mind while watching the letter fill up with blood, and then focused fully on getting the D right. No more distractions, I told myself. I knew I would have plenty of time with the girl, cause my fellow death eaters wouldn’t dare disturb me before I told them I was done. So, if I absolutely had to, I could smell the bloody flowers later.

For now my little artwork was done and I gave myself an A-, as I inspected the word. Her previously unblemished skin now said MudbloOd. It looked extra extravagant with all the blood seeping from the wound, but eventually, not anytime soon, it would stop bleeding and leave a nice scar.

I stared at the blood. It wasn’t muddy. Of course it wasn’t, it was red just like everyone’s. It looked like strawberry jam or wine, ketchup maybe not like mud at all. Appetizing, I thought. I lifted up her arm and brought my face closer to the blood. It smelled exactly like all blood does. It’s not like I didn’t know already that mudblood blood is no different from wizard or muggle blood, I wasn’t crazy, not exactly. But whilst staring at her arm a feeling crept over me that I had been trying to push out ever since I signed my soul over to the Dark Lord.

Bollocks.

The whole idea that muggles or mudbloods shouldn’t be allowed to breed with wizards or that mudbloods and halfbloods are inherently less than pure-blood wizards is absurd. Boom. I can hear you thinking you know? You are wondering how it is possible for the Dark Lord’s right hand to feel that way about blood purity. How it is possible that I joined his cause if I honestly felt that way about all that bloodline hogwash?

No one forced me. I joined him and his bleeding cause of my own volition. I signed up because I’d rather be his foot soldier than a bloody housewife. I had already been turned into the wife of one Rodolphus Lestrange and the pressure was on. The choice between starting a war and having another conversation about producing an heir to the Lestrange line with my mother in law wasn’t a choice at all.

He saw something in me and everyone worshipped the ground he tread on, so we made a deal. He appointed me as his lieutenant, his right hand. I would do everything within my power to push his agenda and he would tell my family I was too valuable to waste away taking care of a litter of Lestrange children.

So it was done. My very real marriage turned into a paper union and I was so grateful I would have followed Him to the end of the earth. Make no mistake. I didn’t think he wanted to overthrow the government gently, I knew the things he would ask of me would be cruel and terrible, but I chose Him anyway. I went in with my eyes wide open. There were no mitigating circumstances, I just didn’t care. Along the way I learned that I was quite good at being cold and hurting people, which landed me in prison. And after my stint in Azkaban I tried to enjoy life to its fullest.

So yeah. The real irony lies in the fact that I never gave two shits about blood purity. Sure I talk the talk and act the part. How could I not? I can’t blooming well be the world’s most feared death eater and preach equality!

I don’t think that mudbloods are an abomination, or that they are filthy or stupid in any way. I know some pure-bloods who are terrible wizards and some mudbloods who are brilliant. Blood purity is just a backwards idea that some people desperately cling to because it makes them feel safe and in control. It’s an idea both my parents subscribed to quite seriously. Sixteen year old me thought it was the dumbest thing but it’s not like I ever actually fought against that ideology. I wasn’t Andy, I didn’t care, I rebelled in different ways.

I thought I could convince my father to listen to my objections to getting married at 18 as long as I kept voicing various arguments.

I learned the hard way that my opinion was entirely irrelevant. I was a girl. A baby making machine in the making. I had to always sit up straight and be kind, be gentle, be polite, well mannered, well dressed, groomed. I was a rebel, until I saw my younger sister declared dead to the family, burned off the tapestry. Until I found my own delightful arse pushed down to the altar on the unforgiving arm of my father. I felt powerless. I was, until I met Tom.

He was the most powerful wizard I had ever met. He didn’t shy away from using the darkest magic available to him to get what he wanted. I had always been fascinated with dark magic, but being a girl there was no need for me to even get a chance to excel at such things. “Why don’t you enrol in healing school Bella? I did when I was your age and waiting for my first baby. Healing will come in very handy if you have a lot of rowdy sons.” I wanted to strangle my mother when she told me that, but I smiled, swallowed my bile and did as she suggested, after all, if I was away from the Lestrange house for any amount of time the chances of me getting pregnant would dramatically decrease.

I met Tom when my parents introduced me to him during a family dinner. He was very charismatic and I was instantly impressed. Not with his long lectures on blood purity, but with all the other stuff. The dark things that I knew existed but had no knowledge of. In spite of the age difference we became great friends. He taught me everything he knew, despite me being a girl. He also told me that all the bigotry and hate mongering was mostly advertising. He wanted everyone to be able to use dark magic freely. He wanted it to be taught in schools even. That was something I could get behind.

I guess, somewhere along the line he started to believe his own propaganda, even if he was a halfblood.

Maybe if I had looked beyond my own bellybutton that day I decided to help unleash a war, I would have made a different choice. A choice that may not have cost me fourteen years in Azkaban. Being the right hand of a man obsessed with blood purity wasn’t as exciting as I’d once imagined it would be. Or maybe things had turned out much differently than promised. I never imagined ever being a servant to a man obsessed with chasing after a teenage boy, a boy whom he had had such trouble disposing of. I sure as hell wouldn’t have signed up to serve someone who put his bloody pet snake above me. None of these things were looking much better than raising a flock of pureblood children after all.

But choices were made and it didn’t matter that the most powerful wizard in the world was a mere shell of his former self, or that I had spent a vast amount of time chained up in a drafty cell. It didn’t matter because abandoning my cause would inevitably lead to my demise. I wasn’t quite ready to go yet. I could die whenever I felt ready, or whenever someone got lucky and managed to slay me. Tom had lost his mind, I knew in my heart of hearts that our cause was losing, but it didn’t matter because I still wanted to live. So I went ahead and did what I had to do, what I wanted to do anyway.

In my quest to become powerful I had hurt so many people, caused such grief and pain that I knew there is be no possibility of redemption, no light at the end of any tunnel, not for me. And the cherry on top of that bitter pie was that after all that, my opinion still didn’t count. I had gone from being a stupid irrelevant girl to being a crazy old hag and the only power I had left was the power of destruction. My leash was a lot longer than it could have ever been whilst being fully married to Rod, but I had always worn a collar.

The day I marked Hermione’s pure, beautiful arm with a slur I didn’t even believe had any validity or real meaning. I knew exactly what I was doing. The truth was, it didn’t matter what I believed. People far more stupid than I would see the girl’s mark and judge her. If she lived after our time together, she would eternally be reminded of an ideology that had fuck all to do with her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello people!
> 
> I couldn't have been more happy with your responses to the first chapter! It's Tuesday so time for chapter two. It's pretty hard to make Bellatrix be Bellatrix and at the same time not at all, but I tried my best.
> 
> I don't have a beta or any friends really, so my mistakes are my own.
> 
> Please read and review, I'm very curious what you think :)

I gawked at my handiwork from really up close for a long while. I got lost in thoughts about my life, the choices I made and the fact that this little peach beneath me was paying for those choices. The girl didn’t make much sound besides the occasional groan, nor did she move, so it took me quite a while to snap out of my musings and focus on the task at hand. When I finally did, I sort of panicked and gave in to the first impulse that I had. I brought my lips to her arm and licked up all the blood that covered her mark. It tasted metallic and faintly sweet, just like my own blood. New blood flowed immediately and for a while I tried to lick it all up until it penetrated my foggy brain that the blood wouldn’t stop soon and that I was being ridiculous.

I sat up straight and looked her in the eyes, the shock and horror were thick on her face.

“You are sick! Totally disgusting, you foul, demented, horrible woman!,” she yelled at me and there was such undiluted hatred in her voice it almost made me uncomfortable. She started struggling against me, trying to throw me off apparently, since she was yelling; “Get off of me!” over and over again. I’m not that easy to get rid off, but I am, as it turned out, easily distracted by a pretty girl squirming against me. I quite enjoyed the way her body was moving beneath me. She was bucking, twisting and shaking in an effort to get me off her, but her actions were motivating me to stay right where I was. Sitting on her. It was the closest thing to sex I had experienced in years.

I knew exactly how pathetic that was but since my escape, my only goal in life was to make the most of it. I wasn’t interested in judging myself for the things that brought me pleasure, however weird or shameful they might have been. Having the girl move against me was pleasurable, both physically and mentally. I must not have been very subtle about the enjoyment I derived form her body cause she stopped struggling abruptly.

“You’re a bloody sick pervert!,” she exclaimed. “Get off me!”

“Oh no,” I pouted mockingly, “whatever am I supposed to do now?” I paused for effect and she looked at me quizzically. “Oh! I know…. CRUCIO!”

Her ear splitting screams filled the air, echoing of the walls. Her body started moving a lot more violently and I shamelessly pressed my crotch closer against her pelvic bone, rearranging the fabric of my skirt so that it wouldn’t be in the way. Her movements were strong and unpredictable, which, countered by my own gyrating moves provided me with exactly the right amount of friction to really get me going. I had to end the spell too soon, or she would be useless. I didn’t mind. It felt very good, but I was never one for instant gratification. I ended the spell and she sort of relaxed.

I bent down, pressing all of me against all of her and looked at her face from up close. She was flawless with her furrowed brow and pouty lips. The anger and disgust had faded from her eyes, there was just pain left. I brought my hand up to her face and she flinched so instead of caressing her cheek I grabbed her chin and forced her to look at me. Fear promptly poisoned the velvety brown of her eyes.

“Get away from me,” her voice was clear but shrill, lined with fear, yet so brave. Her warm breath against my touch starve skin felt like a caress, so welcome and tender. It made me acutely aware of the fact that I’d been humping her like a bitch in heat. That was probably exactly what she saw while looking at me. The thought made me giggle, which, for a split second lifted the fear from her eyes. She thought me mad as a hatter and perhaps she was not wrong.

My mind was far from clear. I don’t often surprise myself. It was the first time I ever noticed deriving physical pleasure from causing someone pain. The first time my lifetime of loneliness caught up with me in such a way. I had buried my sexual appetite years ago cause it caused me nothing but trouble. Bonking the wrong person had only brought the wrath of my father upon me, as well as endless lectures from Cissy and my mother. Bonking the so called right person had made me give up on sex completely. Yet I found myself wanting to shag this delicious piece of forbidden fruit. A very, very bad idea. The consequences of giving in to such a quaint and unwelcome desire would surely be catastrophic. I didn’t much fancy facing the wrath of the Dark Lord.

I couldn’t stay there, at my sister’s house. Not while I was being tempted so easily. I didn’t trust myself not to get so carried away again and I didn’t want to I run the risk of getting caught with my pants down. It was all nice and dandy if Greyback or Lucy got busted with their dicks out, boys will be boys after all, even during an important interrogation. I, however, had to adhere to an entirely different set of rules. I wasn’t a member of their little boys club. They could brag about their conquests within earshot of their wives without anyone batting an eyelash. The other boys were in the same club after all and the wives in question knew better than to have an opinion about such things.

If little old me were to dabble in such depravity and get caught, I would never hear the end of it, that was if I would even survive my punishment, which wasn’t likely. So I couldn’t let myself be tempted by the stupid girl, not there, where at any moment a witness could march in.

I had a couple of options. I could try to restrain myself, which would be hard. I could not worry about getting caught being inappropriate and deal with the consequences if and when I was caught. Or, I could take both of us elsewhere and make a conscious decision to go where I had never gone before. This fit in well with my obsessive need to make the most out of life, so the decision wasn’t a hard one to make.

I flicked my wand and transported myself and the girl to my own house. The only person who could freely apparate in and out of Black Manor besides myself was Cissy. Cissy would undoubtedly lecture my ears off if she were to find me in a compromising position with the mudblood, but she wouldn’t rat me out.

“Oh god, why did you bring me here?,” the girl was panicking, looking even paler than a few moments before, “I think I’m gonna be sick.”  
Of course she was. She was obviously not accustomed to apparating yet. I stood up and summoned a glass of water that I handed to her. She emptied it slowly and then looked at me suspiciously.  
“Why are you suddenly being nice to me?,” she didn’t sound very brave, just scared and confused.  
“Oh little mudblood, don’t worry. I am gonna be a whole lot nicer to you from now on,” I said and I smiled at her, which made her cringe.  
“What does that even mean? Why did you bring me here?”  
“It won’t do to have any of those blockheads at the Malfoy’s walk in unexpectedly and get an eyeful. That’s why I brought you here mudblood.”  
“Oh. This is,” she swallowed thickly, “this is your home isn’t it?”  
“Yes. Welcome to Black Manor. Quite a limited number of mudbloods have ever found themselves within the comfort of these walls and an even smaller number managed to walk out alive.”  
“Great, I’ll inform the alliance.”  
I looked at her in confusion. “What alliance?”  
“Duh, the international alliance of mudbloods. I’ll have to owl them a warning about entering this place as soon as possible.”  
“The international alliance of mudbloods? Does such a thing exist?”

Again she looked at me like I was crazy and then she started to snicker. It was an unexpected thing of beauty. She wrinkled her nose adorably and the way her face lit up practically took my breath away.  
“So beautiful,” I mused out loud and my words drove the mirth right off her face. It was a real shame.  
“Oh god, oh God!,” she shrieked, “you didn’t just bring me here to crucio me in private, did you? ”  
“Not exactly, no.” I hopped from one leg onto the other, shifting my weight. I was starting to become restless, impatient even. I wanted to get on with it already, but another part of me wanted to keep talking to the girl. To engage in small-talk like everything was normal and we were just connecting the way regular people do.

“You ccccan’t do that to me. You can’t rrrrrrrape me.”  
“You’re wrong. I can do whatever I bloody well want to.” I took a few steps closer to her. Close enough to touch her, but I didn’t, not yet.  
“No, no, nooo. Please. You can’t do that. I’m too filthy. Yes. I’m a stupid filthy mudblood and you, you are pure. You are this pure, beautiful woman and tttt ttt touching me would be a nasty stain on your spotless reputation. On your soul.”  
“Oh you are good. If I was who you seem to think I am that little speech might even have worked. Unfortunately for you, I am not. You can’t tell me what to do and you most certainly can’t stop me from taking what I want from you.”  
“No! This isn’t right.”  
“I agree,” I singsonged, “you seem to be overdressed for this very special occasion.”

I waved my wand and the dull muggle attire lifted off her body and landed in a small pile next to the girl. Hermione immediately wrapped her arms around her knees and folded in on herself to protect her now exposed skin from my, admittedly, roving eyes. I only got a quick eyeful of a skin coloured brassiere and ridiculously childish pink panties.  
“Oh lighten up, little mudblood peach. You’re not even fully naked yet.”  
She shivered.

“Yeah, that’s how I feel about your under garments. Didn’t your muggle mommy teach you the importance of matching underwear?”  
“No. Did yours?” She seemed to be walking on a wonky tightrope between absolutely scared and ridiculously brave and impudent.  
“Of course, I was raised proper. But not to worry, I’ll help you out. This attire just won’t do for my purposes.”  
“You’re telling me that I don’t look sexy enough for you to molest me? Are you kidding me? Do you always go about dressing up your victims before you rape them?”  
“Are you stupid or something? Just how many times do you think I’ve done this?”  
“How would I know? You’ve tortured hundreds of people. I’m sure some of them wore matching underwear.”  
“I wouldn’t know,” I fake yawned, inspecting my fingernails. I wondered if I should clip them, which was an insane thought. I’d already put the girl through quite a lot of pain, a little more wouldn’t hurt.  
“You’ve never done this before, have you?”

I didn’t answer that one. There was nothing to be gained form making the girl feel excessively special. It would only expose my insecurities. There was another reason I had let the conversation drag on far longer than necessary. I knew exactly what I wanted from her, I just didn’t know hot to go about it. I was stalling.

I pointed my wand at her and cast a silent levicorpus. Immediately she was pulled up in the air by an invisible force, dangling from her ankles. The blood flowing to her head couldn’t be pleasant, but at least the position she was in gave me an excellent chance to look at her body. Well, until she crossed her arms in front of her chest, something I fixed with a quick binding spell on her arms.

She was perfect, young, smooth, slender but not lanky, muscled but not bulky, and undeniably female. I transformed her displeasing undergarments into a black lace bra and matching panties. Just something that lifted her already perky bosom a wee bit and accentuated her natural beauty. Sexy but classy.

“Much better,” I cooed.  
“Did you always have this strange obsession with matching underwear?” Her voice came from below me. All the blood flowing to her head certainly didn’t impair her knack for waffling on and on. I ignored her and finally reached out my hand. Sliding it down her calf, up if she’d been right side facing up. Her flesh was warm and smooth and I enjoyed the contact very much.

“Bloody hell woman, you’re doing this all wrong!”  
My hand kept gliding, up her thigh and towards the alluring curve of her bum, which I squeezed as soon as I reached it. I moved just a smidgen up under the lace. She shivered but I didn’t delude myself into thinking her reaction was anything other than a display of disgust. It didn’t matter what she thought, I told my restless mind. It didn’t bother me that she didn’t want my hands on her or even that I disgusted her. All’s fair in love and war and this was war.

I pressed my cheek against her thigh and rubbed my nose into her flesh, inhaling the scent and enjoying the closeness, the sensation of her silky thigh against my face. My lips followed suit. I wet them sliding my moist lips along her peachy skin until I ran into my hand at the best, most rounded part of her excellent, elastic, young ass. The spot where the top of her leg turned into her behind. I grazed my teeth over it before I bit down hard, freeing a sound from her throat that could easily be mistaken for a lustful approval. I knew better though, I was trespassing and I liked it. I licked and kissed the place where I’d bitten her, which earned me another sound.

I still hadn’t come up with a game plan. I was improvising, the same way I always do, but this was all new. I bit down a couple more times on various places on her ass, kissing it better each time while running both hands up and down her inner thighs. I was drinking in her responses, good or bad. At least she had the decency to react. I couldn’t imagine any of this to be a big deal to her. She was well of age and obviously quite seasoned with her two boyfriends. Even if she did try to trick me into believing her prudish act. She was silent, save the suspiciously pleasurable sounding responses and I felt myself relax, my stress dissolving in the rhythm of of my ministrations until I found myself completely at peace.

I magicked her body up a bit higher so I could reach her nice handful of breast without having to bend. The weight was upside down which made the experience of touching them strangely resemble holding my own boobs in my hands. That didn’t work out well for me so I swished my wand again and released her from the spell, but not from the arm bind.

She was swaying on her feet once she’d landed and I caught her. Had I been in the shape I was in before I was send off to Azkaban I would have undressed and pressed my skin against her. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Against all expectations the girl was like putty in my arms. She didn’t fight me. I guided her in the direction of the nearest wall and pressed her up against it. I lifted the spell off her arms, tucked my wand into my garter, and pushed my body back against her, planting my lips in her neck, just below her ear. Her soft curls caressed my face like a velvet welcoming committee. I kissed, licked and nibbled her skin while letting my fingers inspect all the curves of her body. She trembled all over.

It had been such a long time since I ever laid as much as a finger on another woman, so long since I’d even wanted to. Tasting her skin gave me flashbacks of better times. A time when I’d had just enough freedom to get away with shagging whomever I fancied, when I didn’t have to resort to forcing myself on sexy mudbloods that were half my age, in the name of war.

It was heaven and hell. Hell because it was so easy to tell myself that the warm body against me was willing, that the sounds she made were sounds of pleasure. She didn’t fight me. Her hands were pressed against my chest but she wasn’t trying to push me off. Not resisting wasn’t quite the same as consent, I discovered. If I hadn’t been in such dire need I would have called the whole thing off. I knew that if I pushed this over the line it would haunt me.

I grazed my teeth over her earlobe and she shuddered, letting out a full blown moan.

“You’re … doing this.. all wrong,” she parroted the words she’d said earlier.  
I took my lips of her skin and looked at her flushed face.  
“I’m the one making the rules. I’m pretty sure I’m not doing it wrong.”  
“You are.”  
“Do enlighten me.”  
“You’re not supposed to be so.. freaking.. gentle. You’re a sodding death-eater for goodness sake,” there was fire and desperation in her voice and I didn’t understand it right away.  
“Are you trying to tell me that you like it rough, you little trollop?”  
“No! And don’t call me that, I’m not a… ooooh!”

Before she got the chance to finish her sentence I had wrapped a mass of soft brown curls around my fingers, jerked her face towards me and joined our mouths. I kissed her because I wanted to kiss her. I made sure I wasn’t being too soft by biting her bottom lip until it bled, and when she opened her mouth I sucked her tongue hard. I kicked her legs apart, my pointy black boots colliding with her pale shins and jammed my knee between her thighs, pushing it up against the flimsy lace barrier.

I caressed her neck, which was probably too kind so I raked my nails over her skin, down along her clavicle, her breast bone, across the rising curve of her breast and right through her nipple. She squirmed and whimpered into my mouth. Her body arched as my nails moved even further down, all the way to the lace of her panties.

I tore the piece of fabric from her body. Her hips rotated and I felt her crotch press even closer into my knee. I was surprised to find it as bare as baby’s buttocks. I reached down and grabbed her puffy lips between my thumb and index finger, pinching quite hard. Wetness made my fingers slippery and it suddenly dawned on me that I was no longer kissing her as much as she was kissing me, passionately.

Being kissed by her was overwhelmingly delicious. Better than made any sense. I broke the best kiss of my life without really wanting to. It felt like I had to, because it was somehow wrong, despite of it feeling so right.

“You really are into rough,” I whispered into her ear.  
“If you are going to.. I mean.. if you .. you are, right? All I want to ask is…,” she trailed off and moaned wantonly.  
“What?,” I asked, my curiosity peaked. I brought my face closer to hers so I could really look at her.  
She didn’t look in my eyes, suddenly shy.  
“Well, if you are going to.. ehm .. well.”  
“Come on, out with it. I haven’t got all day.”  
“I’m a virgin, so I just wanted to ask you to be.. I know this is like the opposite of what I just said, but could you be a little.. ehm.. mindful when you.. you know.”  
I froze as soon as I heard the word virgin fall from her lips. I barely heard any of what came after that word.

“Poppycock!,” I exclaimed as soon as she finished rambling. “You are not a bloody virgin. You’re 18 years old and have two boyfriends with whom you’ve been gallivanting all over the country side for weeks now. You can’t possibly expect me to believe that you of all people are a virgin. I am not stupid.” I let her go, crossing my arms as I took a step back to look at her.

She giggled when she finally looked at me.

“What is so funny?”

She burst out in laughter, real, hysterical laughter. She sank to the floor as her body heaved. Tears started running down her cheeks, but she wasn’t crying, that’s how funny I was to her, apparently. In any other situation I’d be miffed about being so blatantly laughed at. Not that time, I didn’t feel irritated at all, which was curious. It took a good while for her to calm down.

“You really think I’ve been shagging Harry and Ron?”  
“I don’t see why that is such a ridiculous thought. You’re always hanging around them, they’re teenage boys and you are very appetizing. It would make sense.”  
“Right, well I’m not. They’re my friends. I’m pretty sure Harry is into Ginny and Ron, well he is Ron.”  
“You like the weasel? Why? He’s not even…”  
“He’s kind. He has a good heart.”  
“That’s how you pick your bed partners then, based on their kind hearts?”  
“Ron isn’t my bed partner. The only person in my bed is me, always. Ron and I haven’t even kissed. I’ve only been kissed once before.”  
I took another step back, distancing myself from her further.  
“You really are a virgin.” It all made a bit too much sense. She wasn’t just acting like a prude, she was completely untouched, at least up until I barged in and decided I just had to have her.

There was a good chance that I had just ruined her very first experience.

I remembered my first time with Rodolphus and how grateful I had been to have had better experiences before that incident. Those experiences were what I held onto to get me through hours and hours of trying to produce an heir I never even wanted. Turns out I was no better than him.

That was so typically me, selfish as always. This girl had done nothing to me, she was innocent. I liked her even if I wasn’t supposed to and it hadn’t stopped me from doing any of this to her. I couldn’t carry on. I’d already done too much, caused too much damage.

I dug up my wand and put her clothes back on her body.  
“What’s going on?”  
“I’m not doing this, that’s what’s going on.”  
“Not doing what?”  
“I’m not going to take your first sexual experience completely away from you like that,” I said brusquely, “I know it’s practically too late and I’m sorry. Now go!”

I turned around and strutted out of the entrance hall, waving my wand at the door and the wards in passing, to allow the girl to leave. I marched straight to the cabinet that held my sizeable collection of firewhiskeys and poured myself a glass which I emptied in a few quick gulps.

I let out a frustrated growl, cause everything was just so wrong and I didn’t think I could ever look at myself again.

This was going to cost me. There was no way I could explain why the mudblood had escaped. I’d have to make up some story that was believable whilst still being vague enough to not get me into serious trouble. I was so bloody stupid! Just because my plans had suddenly changed didn’t mean that I had to just let her go.

But it did mean that. I didn’t have another choice cause I didn’t want her to die. Her part in this war was too big, she would not be let go, not alive. I couldn’t deliver her into His hands. If I did I wouldn’t just be signing her death sentence I would also ensure that the thing I had just prevented from happening would be her last experience on earth.

I poured another glass and sat down in my favourite leather chair near the fireplace. It wasn’t lit. The upside of my time in Azkaban was that I had become completely immune to the cold. That didn’t begin to make up for the downsides. Being locked away had ruined my life, and for what?  
Look where I was now, who I was now. A forty something woman who had to explain her every move to some raving lunatic who only vaguely resembled the strapping man he had once been.

Even if I met that man, Tom Marvolo Riddle, today, I still wouldn’t follow him anywhere. This war and the war that came before were completely pointless. Look what all this lunacy had made of me! What it had made me do and how much I had sacrificed for a cause that had never even vaguely resembled my own ideas! All that because of two things I had wanted.

Unlimited power and the freedom to do whatever I wanted with it. These two things that I had wanted more than anything were as meaningless as they were unattainable. After all these years they were as far from my grasp as they had always been. Miles and miles. The thought of me chasing after them all my life seemed suddenly immature, so ridiculous that I burst out in tears.

I found myself crying like a baby, which, considering who I was, was even more astounding than the fact I’d let mudblood go. I tried to stop crying but there was nothing I could do. Every single thing I could think of only served to make me bawl my eyes out harder. Self pity is a terrible trap and I fell down that rabbit hole face first.

Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder, which I ignored. It was humiliating enough that Cissy had found me like this. I froze when her hand moved to the back of my neck, caressing me gently, that was new. Narcissa was never one to touch more than necessary.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey internet peeps!
> 
> I'm glad you all seem to be enjoying this ride so far. It's time for the next chapter and as the number of chapter grows and the story moves forward, my apprehension also increases. 
> 
> Not updating is not an option, so here you go. 
> 
> I hope you'll enjoy, please read and review!

“Everything is gonna be alright, you’ll see,” said a soft voice from behind me and my heart stopped for a bit.  
“What are you still doing here, mudblood?,” I growled.  
“I couldn’t just leave, not after what just happened.”  
“Stupid girl,” I spat out, “I told you to go, me! I let you go. Do you have any idea what that means?”  
“Yes. I do.” She circled around the chair I was in, sat down on my lap like it was nothing she hadn’t done before and wrapped both arms around my neck. My jaw dropped.  
“What are you doing?”  
“Sitting.”  
“Obviously but why are you doing it on me?”  
She brought her lips to my ear and whispered: “I didn’t want you to stop.” She rested her head on my shoulder and I held her.

My mind cleared suddenly and completely.  
“You have to leave.” I wanted to throw her off my knees but I was too weak, too stunned by her casual remark about wanting me to continue to ravish her innocence.  
“I don’t wanna go.”  
“You do remember who I am, right? And what I just did to you.”  
“Yes, I remember,” she breathed against me, making me shiver.  
“Then what are you still doing here? Go.”

“You are not who I thought you were.”  
I gently pushed her up and took the arm I’d marked earlier that day.  
“Yes I am, look at your arm. I did that and not because anyone told me to. Look. It hasn’t even stopped bleeding yet. I carved a stupid name into your arm because I thought it was fun, because I could imagine the look on your face when you realized that scar will never fade. That is who I am.”  
“There’s more to you, I know there is.”  
“You are wrong. This is my war and if my side wins, If I get my way, there will be no place left in the world for someone as wonderful as you.”  
“You think I’m wonderful,” she smiled brightly and I felt light headed.  
I folded both hands around her face and stared into her amazingly stubborn eyes.  
“You’re stupid,” I told her and then I kissed her.

She was so soft and so welcoming that I got overwhelmed by a flurry of emotions that made my blood course at full speed. The randiness alone was overpowering. Her mouth set me ablaze and made me so weak I had to cling to her to keep myself from toppling over. I felt warmth, tenderness, the beginning of an earth shattering love and hope. It felt like a light was switched on inside me, showing me the way out of the darkness.

I felt all the things you can ever hope to feel when someone kisses you and more. I was gob-smacked by the intensity of the electricity between us and the way the magic running through my veins seemed to respond to her proximity, to her magic. She was powerful in spite of being young, and her magic hadn’t even fully matured yet. I was impressed.

I broke the kiss which earned me the cutest pout.  
“Please, you have to go.”  
“Why do you keep saying that? You don’t really want me to go, do you?” She started to tug on the hem of her drab beige sweater, pulling it over her head. She reached behind her back and undid the clasps of her bra, letting the straps slide down her arms.

I was faced with her beautifully delicious pink, perky nipples. The perfect toppings to her pert breasts. My hands were on them before I had time to think about it. They were warm and soft and jumped right back into their original shape after I squeezed them. I put my mouth around her left nipple, sucking it into my mouth. Her hands in my hair, tugging on my head, forcing pleasant chills down my spine. Her back arched, her breast pushing into my face.

I was in heaven and judging by the sounds erupting from her throat she was, let’s just say; happy. But even if she thought she wanted this, it still wasn’t right. I pulled back, staring at my horrible old hands with the ridiculously long black nails holding her lovely young breasts. The sight made me cringe.

“This isn’t right,” I whispered. “You have to go. It’s not safe for you here. I am not safe for you to be around. You have to go, please.”  
“I don’t want to go.”  
“What either of us wants has nothing to do with it. You can’t stay, not even if I want you to.”  
I waved my wand and put her sweater back on.  
“Please keep it on. I don’t need the extra distraction.”  
“If I leave can I come back?”  
“Merlin, no. Why would you even want to?”  
“Because I like you. I always did, even when it didn’t make any sense that I did. Now it does.”  
“It really doesn’t.”

“You don’t believe I’m filth.” She looked at me like that little nugget of information had only just found its way into her brain. She cocked her head, like a dog looking at a treat.  
“You don’t believe in blood purity! You don’t believe in your own cause. How.. why?”  
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. It makes no difference. The war going on is very real and most of His followers do believe in blood purity,” I swallowed because I couldn’t believe what I was about to say but I also knew that I wouldn’t regret saying it.  
“You have to stop Him.”  
“Oh my god!” She jumped off my lap and started pacing. I could practically see the cogwheels in her mind turning. She stopped as suddenly as she had started.  
“You can join the order. You can redeem yourself, help defeat the Dark Lord and we could be together.” I saw hope light up her face and my heart broke.

“No. That can’t happen.”  
“Why not?”  
“Because it’s not that simple. I have done horrible things. What do you think Harry would have to say if I tried to join the order, or Neville? How will you explain to them that I deserve to live after what I took away from them?”  
“Sure that might prove to be a bit of a challenge but everyone deserves a second chance.”  
“Not everyone. If those two things were my only transgressions, maybe I could be forgiven. But they are only the tip of a quite humongous iceberg, love. I helped unleash this war, twice. I am not just a deatheater I am THE deatheater. I’m His right hand.”

She stared at me like I just told her that her beloved dog died.  
“Everyone deserves a second chance.”  
“I deserve to die and you know it.” Hearing my own tragic words made me laugh out loud, which made Hermione’s right eyebrow shoot up.  
“It’s funny because I made peace with my upcoming death ever since I broke out of Azkaban,” I tried to explain between shrieks of laughter. “I had fully accepted my impeding demise and decided to make the most of the time I have left, to live in the moment, which, ironically, is exactly what lead to.. whatever this is.”  
“I think I’m missing something,” she said. “You decided to live in the moment, so instead of just torturing me you did what you did, which happened to be a lot better than your original plan. So it’s a good thing, right?”  
“In your case, yes. But do you have any idea what making the most of things meant for me before I ran into you? Are you aware of the kind of things I like to do for fun? The things that make me feel alive and free and powerful. Do you have even an inkling of what lengths I have to go to to feel like I’m not just a rabid dog on a gilded leash?”

I watched her face fall as the realization hit her, the truth of who I was. Not simply a woman but a person as unforgivable as the curses that fell from her lips.

“I don’t care,” she said after a long moment of contemplation and she planted herself back on my lap, pulling my arms around her, burying her hands back in my hair. She pressed her face into mine. She smelled of youth, pain and desire and there was desperation in the way she clung to me.  
“You do care.”  
“No. I don’t care because I know there is good in you,” her voice was a warm whisper against my face. “I don’t care because you’ve already served your time. I’ve read all there is to read about Azkaban and it left me sleepless. You’ve spend 14 years in that bloody hell hole. It broke you, it would break anyone.”

I understood where she was coming from. There may have been a grain of truth in her words, but not enough to change anything.  
“There are no mitigating circumstances for what I’ve let myself become, and you’re forgetting that it wasn’t my love for puppies and rainbows that landed me in there in the first place. Not to mention that I never fully served my sentence.”  
“Bellatrix please.”  
“What?”

“I thought I was broken, that there was something wrong with me because I loved books more than any boy I’d ever met. I tried to force myself to like Victor, all the other girls seemed to adore him. And when that failed I tried to cultivate feelings for one of my best friends and it didn’t work. I thought I was broken because I never had any naked thoughts about anyone. But then.. well. Turns out there is absolutely nothing wrong with me.”  
“Oh something is seriously wrong with you,” I teased.  
“What?”  
“You are having naked thoughts about a dangerous madwoman.”  
“Don’t call yourself that.”  
“It’s the truth, love.”  
“No it’s not. You are not mad.”  
“That only makes it worse, doesn’t it?”  
“Bella.”

I couldn’t stand the sadness in her voice. I ran my hand up and down her spine, rubbing my cheek against hers.  
“Don’t be sad, one day you will find a pretty girl who is your age and you will want to be with her, and it will be brilliant.”  
“I don’t want to leave. I don’t want another girl.”  
“We still have a little bit of time, although you do have to go. It will do a lot of harm if Cissy finds us like this. She will not let you get away and I can already hear her lecture in my head. ”

“You call Narcissa Malfoy sissy?”  
“Everyone close to her does.”  
“A sissy is a weakling or a very effeminate boy, you call your sister that?”  
“It could also mean sister. It’s either that or calling her daffodil. Do you think my sister resembles a cheerful yellow spring flower?”  
“Erm. Well she is a blonde.”

We sat there silently for a long time. My disobedient hands finding their way back to her skin, crawling up under her top. Her lips capturing mine over and over again. I was powerless against her sweet attack on my sanity. Her hands sought out my skin, making me tremble, making my normally so cold skin flame up and blossom beneath her touch.

I couldn’t stop her when she started to undo my corset, it wasn’t the corset alone she undid when I stretched out beneath her on the rug next to the chair we’d just, quite literally slipped out of. She stripped me bare in more than one way and I threatened to come apart at the seams but she somehow held me together.

She looked at me like I was something to be desired, something to be cherished. She shed her clothes because her skin craved to touch mine, like we were two magnets that needed to come together no matter the consequences.

She babbled nervously, her head in the crook of my neck, as we lay together. She on top of me, skin to skin in our private bubble of inexplicable happiness and her breath on my skin drove me up the wall. Her body on top of me and every breath she took only served to make me want her more.

I begged her to touch me, anywhere. I wanted to hold on to that feeling. She made me weak but it wasn’t enough, not until I completely drowned in that weakness. I wanted to be devoured by it, by her, and I was when she put her hands on me, her mouth, her breath, her tongue.

Her invasion of me started out hesitant, clumsy even, but thorough. She was a fast learner. Shedding her insecurity and shame the same way she had shed her clothes. She started out soft but she became frenzied, her breathing shallow. She was right there with me, her hunger for me growing as she tried to still mine.

Don’t hold back I wanted to tell her. I couldn’t spare the breath and soon learned that she didn’t need my direction. She understood my body, interpreted the subtlest of signals effortlessly. She wasn’t scared to hurt me, not because she thought I deserved to be hurt but because she knew what I needed. I needed raw, unleashed, uninhibited. I needed her to leave her mark on me so I wouldn’t be left empty and alone with nothing to show for our time together. She gave me what I wanted because she needed it too.

She gave me a string of painfully exquisite orgasms and then boldly positioned herself on my face so that I could return the favour. I ravished her that way and after that in other ways. I wanted to hear her scream my name and she did. I wanted to make her come in every way I could think of and every position. There wasn’t enough time.

I also wanted to hold her, to enjoy the simple pleasure of naked conversation and to kiss her with all the tenderness in the world. I wanted a billion passionate nights and a lot of lazy mornings. I wanted to sleep while holding her, my nose buried in her hair and to have her face be the first thing I saw every day. I wanted to teach her things, show her places, do mundane things, special things. I wanted her, all of her.

Her hands framed my face and she pulled me on top of her. Her eyes the softest velvet in the world.  
“What’s wrong?” For a flash second I thought she was using legilimency on me, but she didn’t have a wand.  
I struggled with an answer.

The world has turned and I’m the only one who noticed it. Did you notice it? Tell me I’m not alone here cause if I am, I might die right here, right now. Except, I already did, die, just now, and I was reborn. I buried the pieces of my old self inside of you because I know you can handle the weight, but also so you won’t forget me when I’m really gone. I love you because of who you are not, and what you are not. I know it’s crazy because I barely know you, but my soul knows you. I love you because you are smart and funny and beautiful and warm and you make me forget myself.

I couldn’t tell her any of that insanity.

“You make me want things,” I finally answered.  
“You make me want things too.”

“Will you allow me to come back to you, to see you?”  
“I live alone here, no one dares follow the crazy old hag into her lair. ”  
“I will.” I believed her.  
“You have to get into my vault.”  
“Ehm, sure, but haven’t I just been all over it?”  
I chuckled. “My Gringotts Vault. There’s an object there that needs to be destroyed.”  
“A horcrux?”  
“Yes. It’s a cup. I don’t know what any of the other ones are, or even how many. Quite a lot I imagine. They must all be destroyed before..” my voice trailed off as I realized exactly what I was doing. I never imagined betraying everything I had ever worked for would be so easy. It didn’t hurt one bit.

I closed my eyes and kissed her gently. It started out as a tender unison of mouths, my heart beating in the rhythm of her name, a cadence that sped up suspiciously until she gasped and broke the kiss.

“Bellatrix is this normal?” She suddenly asked me like I was the poster child of normality, as if I knew anything about it.  
“Are you asking me if you are mad?”  
“No.”  
“Good. The answer would surely disappoint you.”  
“You do think that I am insane?”  
“I’m not complaining about it.”  
“I wasn’t crazy until I met you.”  
“Are you blaming me? Insanity isn’t contagious.”  
“I wanted you even before I met you.”  
“How is that possible?”  
“I saw your picture in the paper when you escaped.”  
“Ouch, not my best look.”  
“Did you feel the same?”  
“I didn’t even know what you looked like, so no.”  
“And when you saw me?”  
“Hmm. I first saw you at the ministry and well, I didn’t pay much attention to you, but you looked like you needed to hang on the tree a wee bit longer.”  
“But when you saw me today I looked ready to be plucked?”  
“Obviously.”

She looked at me like she was going to say more but before she could my dark mark started to burn and I shot up.  
“He’s calling you,” she concluded when she saw me grasping my arm.  
“Yes and I have to go. You have to go.” I flicked my wand to dress both of us and then held it out to her.  
“I can’t take your wand.”  
“You have to, I don’t have yours and you need a wand to get home.”  
“And how will you apparate to your lord?”  
“Don’t worry about me. Take the wand, you’ll need it to get into my vault anyway. Please, take it and go.”  
Her hand vanished into my hair and she kissed me, pulling out what felt like a complete section of it when she withdrew.  
“Be safe,” she said, smiled at me and disapparated.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> this chapter is a bit light on the Bellamione, but I dunno it kinda wrote itself so lemme know what y'all think :)

My mark burned brighter and longer. I couldn’t apparate without my wand so I waited for the inevitable crack that announced my sister’s arrival.

“Bella! What happened, where is the mudblood?” Narcissa looked at me quizzically, she was reading me. Something she had become frustratingly good at. She came to a halt directly in front of me. Taking the space that mere moments before had been taken up by Hermione.  
“What did you do Bella, where is she?”  
“She left and took my wand.”  
“I’m sure you mean that she escaped.”  
“She’s gone.” For the second time that day I felt about ready to cry. This time I managed to hold it in and smile instead.  
My dear sister slapped my face so hard it made my head spin.  
“I can smell her on you,” she shrieked. “Merlin’s balls Bella! Are you insane? Do you want to die? Don’t you have any self respect? How could you touch that .. that … that filth!”  
I rolled my eyes. “Please spare me the lecture, Cissy I am not 17 anymore.”  
“Oh I know. That only makes it worse. It’s one thing that you molested the mudblood but you let her go! What are we supposed to tell the Dark Lord?”  
“You don’t have to tell him anything. I will explain that she stole my wand and disapparated with it in an unguarded moment. The voices in my head can make me forgetful sometimes.”  
“He will punish you.”  
“Like he’s done many times before. He won’t kill me.”  
“Promise me that you won’t see her again.”  
I waved my hands dismissively. “Are you kidding? I had to imperio her to make her.. forthcoming.”  
“You are disgusting!”  
“Funny. Do you ever tell your dear husband that after he had a run in with a specimen he couldn’t resist?” My sister looked at me like the question I posed was completely unreasonable.

“He is a man. He has needs. It’s not the same. You are supposed to be a woman, you are, yet you are not. What happened to you? Why do you have this strange inclination towards your own gender?”  
Her stupidity was baffling to me, even if I’d heard it all before.  
“I don’t know,” I answered timidly in an effort to avoid more of this unpleasant conversation. She waved her wand at me and made the delicious residue of the best hours in my life disappear. Highly frustrating but probably the right thing to do. I looked at the clock and saw that exactly six hours and five minutes had passed since my fellow deatheaters had decided to leave me alone with Hermione.  
I smiled.

“Stop thinking about that filthy piece of mudblood ass. Focus. We need to think of an approach.”  
Again she was right. My sister may have thought that I was a disgusting abomination in one area of my life but she didn’t want me dead. She was always trying to fix me, to help me. She worried about me. She was the only person who truly cared about my well-being, albeit in her own weird and controlling way.

She had welcomed me back from Azkaban with open arms, inviting me to dinners and even insisting I stay at Malfoy Manor for a while. She ignored my rudeness and my lack of polish. She healed me to the best of her impressive abilities and then brought in other healers just to make sure I was completely healthy. She took me shopping cause I didn’t have more than the rags on my back and offered to have me coiffed and groomed, which I naturally declined because I didn’t care about my appearance.

Despite her arrogance, her constant need to be in control, her obsession with perfection and manners, her ignorance and her unconditional love for her idiotic husband and their creepy albino offspring, Narcissa was worth everything to me. She was loyal beyond sense. She was the only person in my life who called me eccentric and didn’t mean insane. She clung to me because I was amongst the last of her original family. She’d kept in contact with Andromeda far longer than I had and I was almost completely convinced she was still in contact with her. She was not one to let people go.

“Guard your mind. I don’t want to lose you. Be crazy,” she told me.  
“I’m ready,” I kissed her cheek and she apparated us right back to her house. We were instantly surrounded by Lord Crazy and his faithful minions.

“My Lord,” I greeted the inhuman looking shadow of my former friend and curtsied dramatically. I sauntered closer to him while holding on to the hem of my skirt.  
“How nice of you to finally grace us with your presence, Bellatrix,” he lisped. “Where is the girl?”  
“She escaped my lord, took my wand and flew right out the window. Fly, fly little filthy bird, may your filthy blood muddy the streets.” I waved my arms as if I was preparing for lift off myself.

“How did she get away?,” he thundered, and the men around me trembled like toy soldiers that are displayed at the feet of a toddler having a temper tantrum. I giggled hysterically. “Look at them, they’re getting ready to fall. Just like the bridge,” I whispered just loud enough to be heard.  
“The mudblood was with you, right? You took her. Where did she go?” He looked seething enough to burst in out flames.

“Well. I’m not sure my lord. She was there. Yes I’m sure she was. She definitely was there that time. Wait. Was she though? What if she wasn’t there? One to three.. come out come out wherever you are you little filthy bird. No! Don’t fly off now!”  
“Lucius what possessed you to leave her in charge of the girl?”  
Narcissa stepped forward, as always quick to cover for her useless husband.  
“We were focused on the boy, my Lord. Bella thought the girl had taken something from her vault. She seemed fine when we left them alone. We didn’t think she would take her anywhere else. She was focused on getting an answer, she was completely lucid.”  
“Enough woman! I asked your husband.”

Lucy repeated Narcissa’s words, without mentioning the boy which lead me to believe the boy had escaped as well. That was a relief.

“And the boy?,” I screeched. “Where is the boy? Did you finally rid the world of Potty my magnificent Master?”  
“CRUCIO!” Came my answer in all its brutality. A billion flaming knives nestled themselves into my body. Searing, excruciating heat started eating at my guts, tearing me completely apart while leaving me fully intact. There was no escape, just pain and more pain, slowly devouring me. It went on and on.

The thing about the cruciatus curse is that you never get used to it. It doesn’t matter how many times you undergo it. Every time will be more excruciating than the last. My throat was soon hoarse from screaming and then I saw her. My perfect mudblood girl. I saw her smile in my mind and held on to that. The pain faded into the background as my mind slipped into memory.

I didn’t get out of it until my bloody sister slapped me in the face. Just the two of us left.  
“You deserved that for what you allowed to happen. You were oozing memories during that curse, Bella, you’re lucky to still be alive.”  
“Nobody wants to see into my mind, especially not the Dark Lord, especially not when I’m acting all loopy. You’re the only one brave enough to go there.”  
“Or foolish enough. I feel dirty just from your memories.”  
“Well I’m sure the mudblood feels equally dirty if that’s any consolation.”  
“It really isn’t. Here, take this wand for now. We can get you a new one later this week.”  
I took the short light wooden wand she held out to me.  
“If you’re done lecturing me I would like to go home now.”  
“No. Please let me heal you.”  
“I don’t need healing. I need rest.”  
“Come, have dinner first. We need to put some meat on your bones.”  
She was right. I hadn’t eaten at all yet. While she, her twat and her devilspawn were having dinner I had been otherwise engaged. I smiled at the memory, which earned me another sour look from Cissy.

She sat with me while I ate and managed not to scold me about not using my manners. She wasn’t very good company either. She sat there looking at me as if she was trying to understand me. Her eyes filled with worry.

When I finished my plate and got up she hugged me.  
“Everything alright, Cissy?” She didn’t let go off me.  
“You got away with it this time, Bells. Please don’t see her again. Please, I am begging you, this is me begging. You are already in enough danger as is and I couldn’t stand losing you. Please be very very careful.”  
I tucked a disorderly lock of shiny blond hair behind her ear and looked into her icy eyes.  
“Just how long do you think the imperius curse lasts?,” I chuckled.

“We both know that there was no curse, no force. You wanted her and she wanted you.”  
“Bollocks, look at me. I’m a crazy, disgusting old hag. Who would want me?”  
My sister looked at me in silence for a few minutes.  
“You look… rough, Bells. But you are far from disgusting or old. You’re still beautiful, it’s just hidden, not gone.”  
“Right, that must be why so many people are trying to court me.”  
“When have you ever been interested in courting anyone? Is that what this whole mudblood thing was all about? Are you … Lonely?”  
“Either that or I’m really losing my mind.”  
“You’re scary, people think you’re mad, that’s why no one dares to even try.” She reached out her hand and gently pulled on one of my frizzy curls. “The teeth are very bad, but you could fix them. You could also try to get your hair under control and do a few simple spells to make yourself look slightly less… ghastly. I could help you. If you let me, people will be lining up for you, like they used to. Then you could think about … courting.”  
“You do understand that you would be helping me to get pretty to attract women, right?”  
She rolled her eyes at me. “Yes I know, no need to point it out. I understand that you will never bring a man to a family dinner. I don’t approve of course. But I also want you to be happy. All I ask is that you bring home a respectable witch, not some mudblood who is half your age.”  
“I promise, but I don’t need your help. I am perfectly capable of beautifying myself. ”

I pried myself from her arms and apparated directly into bathroom. I took a long bath, thinking about the things my sister had told me. Narcissa was many things but she wasn’t a liar. She didn’t even like to sugar-coat things. Apparently when she looked at me she didn’t see the same thing I saw when looking in the mirror. That wasn’t even the most amazing thing she had said. She would accept me if I just brought home a pureblooded witch. I needed to forget about the mudblood.

I slept like a baby that night.

Hermione was the first thing on my mind when I woke up the next day. Thinking of her made me happy enough to jump out of bed. It didn’t matter that I wouldn’t see or hold her again. I was convinced it was for the best for both of us. We were star-crossed but she did bring me back to life, I was grateful for that. I wanted to do something silly, like run bare footed through a meadow in bloom or roll of a hillside, but it was dreadful weather and I had people to torture, family meals to attend and snakes to feed. He always made me feed Nagini when I had let him down. He knew I hated the beast.

There was still quite a bit of time before I was expected to appear at my sister’s. I picked up the wand that Cissy had given me last night. It was small, but it obeyed me and if I wasn’t mistaken it was dragon heart-string just like my own. I went up to the library and read up on how to heal teeth, how to take care of skin and I even sped through a book Narcissa had pushed on me not too long ago titled: “What magic can do for your unruly mop of hair.” Riveting stuff. 16 year old Bella would have mocked me for growing soft, for wanting to be pleasing, for caring about something so trivial.

I hadn’t worried about my looks since before I was married to Rod. In the year I’d lived with him my looks had been more like a burden. In Azkaban I stopped caring all together, and now, suddenly I cared. Even if I never saw Hermione again. I wanted to rise, to be crazy and frightening and at least somewhat beautiful-ish. I had been living like a wild animal but that had gone on long enough. Something had to give.

While sludging through lines and lines of uninteresting facts about all things I didn’t really care about I realized how easy it would be to just let Cissy take care of me, but I took pride in my independence. So I read and read an got to work.

The book had said that the spells I needed to make my teeth look presentable would be: “Slightly uncomfortable,” but the book lied, or maybe it was written by an optimist. Every single spell hurt like hell and I needed to take breaks, just to get through it. All in all it took me nearly an hour to get it done. When I was finished my whole mouth felt completely different. I was curious but had decided against looking in between treatments so that the effects would be more visible.

Next up were some spells to minimize wrinkles, cure the bags under your eyes, moisturise, tighten and rejuvenate. One one hand all these spells sounded to me like they would do the same, and I might be over doing it, on the other hand I did think Cissy’s description of me as “ghastly,” called for maximum effort. I specifically avoided any spells that claimed to clean up blemishes and redness because I didn’t want the only evidence of my time with the girl to disappear.

I cast the spells and didn’t feel any different at all. Lastly I enchanted my hairbrush which literally took only one second. As soon as I started brushing my hair with it, I kicked myself for not thinking of it years ago. It only took minutes to get through it all.

When I was done I hauled my ass over to the dreaded full body length mirror in my bedroom.

It wasn’t the same old ghastly horrorshow looking back at me, nor was it the beautiful young girl I had once been. My reflection was, acceptable. I looked human and far more attractive than I had thought possible. I was still pale but no longer sickly and my skin seemed to glow, the way Narcissa’s skin did. My hair was wild and black, save the single white lock and it no longer looked like it was styled by lightning, it was soft and shiny and fell down my face in tight curls. The biggest change were my teeth. I was pleased.

I apparated back to my sister’s house. It was still early so nothing much was going on yet. My main motivation was my empty stomach and my even more empty pantry. The elf that Cissy had assigned to me, Rommy, was a terrible cook.

I walked up to the lounge that held all three members of the Malfoy family. They were having tea. My sister sitting on the couch next to her beloved son, the two of them deeply engaged in conversation, and Lucy was hiding behind the Daily prophet in his favourite chair. The whole tea drinking business was obviously not his idea, but Narcissa made sure she got what she wanted, always.

If only her mind wasn’t so preoccupied with running a perfect household and being flawless, she could have accomplished greatness.

Instead, my sister had worked her whole life to make our parents proud. My baby sister was always everyone’s favourite. Impeccable grades, flawless manners, perfect appearance. She was demure and obedient and could always muster just the right amount of enthusiasm for a ball or family gathering. She’d always been the exact opposite of me. As a child she was spoiled rotten, a real little miss goody two shoes. She smiled a lot, which used to annoy me to no end. She was the perfect daughter, always accommodating, she hated conflict. She is and always has been my mother’s mouthpiece.

She could do exactly what I never could. She married Lucius in spite of him being a slimy git, bore his albino spawn and loved him for putting a bun in her oven. She raised her son in good pureblood tradition and the boy turned into a cowardly, hatemongering twit. Draco was the spitting image of his father and my sister was so proud of him it dazzled me.

It made me sick, but part of me was also in awe of her. The small part that wasn’t angry at her for rolling over so easily and accepting her fate to be nothing but the great woman behind a very disappointing man. Relationships are complicated. I loved my sister, admired her perseverance and her ability to love unconditionally but at the same time I abhorred the things she represented. She was a shining example of everything that was wrong in the world I was born into.

I was thinking about all of that while I stood in the doorway observing the perfect picture of family bliss in front of me. I had to give the two slimy gits points on one thing, the ultimate redeeming quality; they both really did love my sister.

“Aunt Bella,” Draco exclaimed when he finally spotted me. “You look… different.” His eyes nearly popped right out of their sockets.  
“Hello, Cissy, Devilspawn,” I greeted my sister and nephew. Lucy didn’t much care for the cute nicknames I gave him so I refrained from calling him anything. We mostly ignored each other out of courtesy to my sister. He didn’t completely ignore me that day. He looked at me and kept looking at me in a way no one, save the mudblood, had looked in me in two decades.

“Oh Bella, you look great. Such an improvement. Of course It wouldn’t hurt if you got rid of those ridiculous nails,” she beamed. Leave it to Narcissa to pair any compliment she gave with some light criticism.  
“I like them fine,” I smiled at her. “Now if mister Narcissa Black could kindly pick his pretty jaw up off the floor and quit his invasive gawking, it would be greatly appreciated.” Lucy flushed with anger at the implication behind what I had called him. Narcissa was after all his trophy wife, and I had just told him in not so many words that he was her pretty possession. I didn’t break my promise not to antagonize my brother in law lightly. I felt it was necessary to remind him that he, in fact, hated my guts.

“Bells, please, behave,” Mrs Malfoy scolded me.  
“Of course Cissy, please forgive me,” I pleaded gently. “You know how sensitive my nerves are.” I flailed my arms in fake helplessness, skipped to the empty chair on the other side of the room, snatching two pastries of the tray in the centre of the coffee table and draped myself in the chair.

“Manners please,” she scolded me a second time while I was stuffing my face full of Bakewell tart. It was cherry too, my favourite.  
“You look like a proper lady now, it is time to brush up on your manners, dear.” She poured me a cup of tea, using her wand.  
“Please, Cissy, no more lectures,” I spoke with my mouth full, pieces of tart flying everywhere, intentionally only underlining the point she was trying to make. She blew up at me, probably because the changes I’d made to my appearance gave her the misguided idea that I would be open to her suggestions. My good mood vanished and the day had only just started.

Everyone I ran into at the manor that day stared at me in a way that almost made me regret my make over and to top it off the Dark Lord went on one of his long winded rants. The dread that often overcame me during hours of listening to the Him speak of his plans, his vision, or lack there of and always, always the boy, now fell on me like a heavy stone that pinned me to the ground. I found His ego unbearable and when I was finally dismissed, I learned that I didn’t enjoy torturing people anymore.

Trying to get information out of a young ministry worker and his wife, both crying all the time and pleading for their lives brought me no relief, no enjoyment. I still had to do it, even though it was miserable and horrible. Sickening really. The day, that had started out feeling like the first day of the rest of my life, but in a good way for the first time in ages, turned sour in my mouth. My own actions turning on me before I finished getting through them, leaving a bile in my throat that was too thick to swallow.

I couldn’t carry on, couldn’t continue torturing them. It was obvious to me that neither of them was going to tell me anything because they didn’t have any information. I got the distinct impression that both of them were only brought in to keep me occupied.

I released the couple from their suffering with a quick avada kedavra and marched straight back into the Dark Lord’s chamber. He was propped up in a chair in front of the fireplace, his bloody snake curled up on his lap, his hand mindlessly caressing her scales while he was talking to Lucius. The conversation stilted when I burst into the room.

“Do you think me ignorant, my Lord?,” I accused. “Do you think I need to be kept busy while the men discuss the important things? The things that will just fly right over my pretty little head? Am I that useless to you my Lord?” I was so mad I was screaming, stomping my feet and pulling on my own hair, like a child. I was breathing fire because I had suddenly and unexpectedly reached the conclusion that me and my sister had more in common than I thought. I too was a shining example of a great woman behind a sub par man.

“Do you think me so bloody brainless that I wouldn’t recognize a fool’s errand when put in in front of me? None of these so called witnesses knew anything!,” I screeched. “Kindly explain to me why you are providing me with occupational therapy day after day after day! And please do tell me why every time my back is turned Lucy here is whispering in your ear? I might be crazy but I’m not stupid and I’m not blind, ” my anger evaporated as I realized just what I was doing. I was screaming at the most dangerous man in my life. I was blowing up at the one person I could never go off on. And I wasn’t using my loony voice. Knowing I was jeopardizing my life wasn’t enough to stop me though. It never had been.

“Please, oh please my almighty Master, at least have the courtesy to tell me I have been replaced!” Despite my best efforts I couldn’t help but sound sarcastic. “I gave you bloody everything and you don’t even have enough respect for me to tell me that I’ve outlived my usefulness to you! I’ve put my whole life on hold in service of your fucking cause and now that we’re actually getting close towards completing your quest and bringing your bloody backwards vision to life you think of me and my efforts as the small sacrifices of an inferior female! Not that there could be another kind, not in your eyes.”

For once I had to tell the truth. There may have been a time that a charming man called Tom saw my potential and thought of me as an equal but that time was long gone. I was nothing. And I couldn’t for the life of me figure out when I had let this happen to me. At what point in my life I had just decided to roll over and play the role of obedient, insignificant little woman. It must have happened gradually.

I had been pretending to be a lunatic for nearly two years just to make sure that my former best friend wouldn’t kill me for being an insolent female, for wanting to have a voice, like he promised me I would. I was sick of it and honestly I didn’t care if he killed me now. I wasn’t afraid to die.

She broke me. The thought crashed into me like lightning. Hermione flipped a switch inside of me and plop, I was fully alive, fully human, fully aware and fully incapable of doing my job, the job he assigned to me. Maybe I had acted the part of madwoman a little too convincingly. Perhaps I had actually been mad.

He had been trying to replace me with Lucius ever since I returned from Azkaban and I had played right into his hand. Maybe I was really his lieutenant before he was defeated the first time, but I hadn’t been in a long time. I just hadn’t seen it. I had been too preoccupied with enjoying my freedom. With torturing people.

None of the people I had interrogated in months had given me a single useful shred of information about anything, none of them had any to give. He had been keeping me occupied ever since I had returned.

The snakelike man stopped caressing the beast on his knees and rose to his feet with all the grace of a 90 year old pain riddled gram-pa who has misplaced his walking stick. The disgruntled snake fell to the floor unceremoniously and let out a series of threatening hisses. His favourite creature in the world and look how he treated it. I had fallen from grace a long time ago.

“Go,” he told Lucy and for the first time I noticed the effort it took him to speak, like every word hurt him. He was so frail it was hard to remember the man he had once been, difficult to imagine killing him would be harder than simply wrapping my hands around his throat and squeezing the life out of his body. I longed to to do just that.

“Bellatrix,” he uttered once Lucius had excited the room. His scarlet eyes focusing on me completely. He smiled, but due to the state his brush with death had left him in, his smile was neither friendly nor reassuring.  
“My Lord,” I curtsied because that’s what I always did. He reached out and touched my face. His hand was cold, like he wasn’t even really alive.  
“I can still see the girl that you used to be. So young, so naive, so eager to learn, to be more than what your husband wanted to make of you. I set you free once and now I will do it again.”

The thought that this was the end of the line for me bit into my stomach. I didn’t want to die, not before I saw her again. It would take less than two minutes to tell her what I wanted to tell her, but it didn’t look like I was gonna get that chance. Stupid Bella. Who in their right mind would storm in on the Dark Lord and throw a temper tantrum?

“You have become a liability, my dear, dear Bella. Letting the mudblood escape, killing off any informant the snatchers caught before receiving the information that we’re after,” he spoke painstakingly slow. I wanted to scream at him to get on with it, but that wouldn’t be a very smart move, my life was already hanging by a thread. “You’re out of your mind half the bloody time, you’re insolent, and your theatrics are a source of annoyance and distraction amongst my best men. I’m not sure you even grasp the fundamentals of what we are trying to do here, nor am I convinced that in you heart of hearts you support our goals. The list goes on and on.”  
I held my breath, expecting him to pull out his wand and hit me with the green ray of death any minute now.

“You are, however, still a capable witch, in spite of your obvious shortcomings. You are an excellent dueller and someone my most capable healer cares a whole lot for. Your sister, unlike you, knows her place and is worth her weight in gold. And I know you would never do anything to betray her. At one point in time I considered you my greatest asset and a good personal friend. I regret what your time in Azkaban has taken from you although I can’t take any responsibility for you ending up there. You were never one to be told what to do, Bella. I am an old man and maybe foolishly sentimental but for those reasons I will spare your life.”

I exhaled.

“I will even give you a chance to redeem yourself in the upcoming battle. If you do well I will give you everything you have earned and if not, well… we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”  
“But my Lord,”  
“Silence!,” he barked at me. “Don’t you understand that you are on very thin ice woman! You will do well to shut your mouth until I am finished speaking and after, cause quite honestly I have had it with your ravings and your whining. You will fight on my side when the time comes. You will win back my trust. Until then I don’t want you hanging around my men, making everyone crabby. Maybe Cissy could find a use for you. I don’t care, as long as you are no longer a nuisance. Now get the hell out of my sight!”

I got out as quickly as I could. I knew I was lucky to walk away with my life in tact, but I felt wronged, mistreated. It wasn’t right to be discarded like an old rag after devoting my life to his insanity. I felt betrayed, humiliated and butt hurt. I learned once again that I had no real value to anyone but Narcissa. There’s a difference between suspecting some gut feeling to be true and actually witnessing the truth.

I went right to my sister, who was talking to her treacherous husband who took off as soon as he saw me coming. I could tell by the look on her face that she knew exactly what had just happened. I wanted to slap the pity off her face, but I forced a wicked grin.  
“Bloody hell Bella, what were you thinking?”  
“I got a tad carried away.”  
“I’d say. Is your life worth nothing to you?”  
I shrugged.  
“When will you start to understand that you can’t just put your life in danger on a whim, that it’s not just your life that will end if you die. I care a great deal about what happens to you. If you don’t care about yourself, at least try to be considerate of my feelings.”  
“Don’t be dramatic Cissy. You’ll always have your little albino gang. Not having me in your life might actually improve it.”  
“Don’t say that. Please!,” she shook her head in disbelief.

“What will you do now?”  
“Oh I dunno. I was fed up with trying to make people talk anyway. There’s only so much you can do to them without invoking insanity. Boring really if you think about it, tedious, not to mention the task of trying to get the bloodstains out of your clothes.”  
“Will you help me instead?,” she asked hopefully.  
“No Cissy I’ve always disliked healing and you know it.”  
“Then what will you do?”  
“Live my life, read a book, whatever I want.”  
“Sitting home alone will do you no good.”  
“I’ve already lost my mind, and giving madwomen people to torture doesn’t seem like such a great idea after all.”  
“You’re not mad.”  
“Are you sure of that?”  
“Absolutely. Is there anything you need? How can I help you?”  
“Please send one of your good elves my way, one that knows how to prepare food.”  
“But Rommy is so fond of you.”  
“Rightly so of course, she can stay I could use two elves, they could keep each other company. I just need one that can be trusted not to set the kitchen on fire whilst trying to make me toast.”  
“Well I suppose I could send you Figgy, as long as you promise to come for dinner twice a week.”  
“Fine,” I sighed. “But you can’t expect me to be nice to that gloating, usurping, slimy git.”  
“You can’t blame everything on my husband.”  
“The shoe seems to fit, Narcissa.”  
“Fine, I’ll send you Figgy, please be kind to her, if you need anything else just...”  
I poofed before she could finish her sentence.

I spent the rest of the day and the next three days alone. I sent Rommy to fetch me groceries and had Figgy make me three glorious meals a day. I lit the fire in the room I’d been revived in and stared into the flames.

Here I was. All coiffed and groomed and hoping for a miracle. In the end I was grateful that the dark Lord didn’t require my services any time soon, it gave me time to think, to remember, to feel her, again and again. It made me happy and sad at the same time.

I longed to see her, consequences be damned. I considered apparating around on the off chance of catching a glimpse of her, but decided against it. I wasn’t sure where she was living and I couldn’t risk getting caught. I also couldn’t face the possibility that she might see me and run away. I simply had to accept that I was not a part of her world, or ever would be. I wasn’t even part of my own world anymore.

She had ripped me from it, ripped me out of myself and left me with a gaping wound in my chest. Poor old Bella and her bleeding heart. I was alone. I foolishly yearned for her in my solitude. Thinking of her all day long, my heart bleeding hope. I stared into the fire and felt the flames tear at my soul, beyond ready to devour me.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello lovely people!
> 
> Thank you for your comments, each one of them literally brightened my day although I do not speak any Russian and did have to translate one!
> 
> It seems technically speaking uploading chapters to this story is quite challanging for me, cause it appeared that the four chapters that were up showed as 1,2,4,5. I can assure you that in spite of this numbering mishap the actual chapters did line up, so no biggie and all fixed now.
> 
> So here's the real chapter 5, I hope you enjoy it.

I was sitting in the exact same spot. It was Thursday night and I should have been sitting at Cissy’s undoubtedly well stacked dinner table but I couldn’t. I was staring into my almost empty glass of firewhiskey and listening to the rain and the happy giggles of the two house elves hiding in my cupboard.

A crack announced the end of my solitude. I quickly stowed my glass under the chair, straightening my spine in preparation for my little sister’s fury. I waited for the angry clicking of her heels approaching me and when it didn’t come I stood up and turned towards the door.

Hermione was standing in the doorway, clad in formfitting dark blue muggle pants and a high collared black sweater that was equally tight. She looked like a dream that had somehow managed to break through into my reality. She didn’t seem to be certain she actually wanted to come in further. She was staring at her hands, restlessly fumbling with the hem of her right sleeve. When she spoke, without looking up, she sounded almost as apologetic as she looked.

“I know you may not be very happy to see me but I couldn’t stay away.”

My feet started covering the distance between us and when she finally looked up I was standing in front of her. She gasped, reaching out to put her hand on my cheek. I leaned in to her touch like a dog begging to petted.

“You were already beautiful,” she stammered, “but now..”  
I kissed her to shut her up and because I needed to kiss her to know that this was real. That I hadn’t imagined the connection we shared or how she made me feel. I hadn’t. I pulled her body against me and finally felt peace settle over me.  
“I was so scared that you would just tell me to go. That all of this was just some weird hallucination,” she sounded about as relieved as I was to find that it was anything but a hallucination.  
“I’m much too glad to find you here to tell you to go. I’ve longed for you,” I didn’t intend to smack her in the face with a confession like that but my words ran away from me the way they liked to do every time I felt something very strongly.

“I can’t stop thinking about you. It’s very distracting,” she made her own confession, took my hand and pulled me over to the couch where she sat down next to me, holding onto my hand like it was her life line. She seemed restless, like something was eating at her.

“I have to ask,” she finally started, “even if I already know the answer. I have to ask to be sure.”  
“Ask me what?” I squeezed her hand because she sounded so nervous.  
“Have you given me amortentia?” The question was ridiculous enough to make me chuckle.  
“Amortentia doesn’t last for four days, which I’m pretty sure you know.”

She got up suddenly and stood in front of me, making me look up at her. Brown curly locks dangling down her face as her eyes rested on me. The girl in front of me only vaguely reminded me of the mudblood the snatchers had brought in. That girl had been a stranger, an appetizing mouse caught in a deadly trap. I knew the body standing before me and the hands pressing down on my shoulders. I knew her, she wasn’t a mouse. She was a siren and my body was already responding to her call.

“Maybe you’ve improved the recipe or put some other spell on me.”  
“That would be quite an impressive accomplishment. I didn’t know you held me in such high intellectual regard.”  
“You’re obviously very bright although your mind isn’t exactly the first thing I think about when I think of you.”  
“Then what is the first thing on your mind when you think of me?”  
“Do you really wanna know?”

She gave me a hard push that made me topple backwards and for a split second I thought she might tell me that she thought of me as a deatheater above all else and spill out some of the horrifying things she’d heard about me.

“Yes I really want to know.”

She put her hands on each side of my face, leaning down, essentially trapping me between the couch and her body but making sure our bodies didn’t touch anywhere. She whispered something so softly I couldn’t hear what she was saying, or maybe she was just mouthing a word. A spell perhaps, since the hem off my long skirt started crawling up far enough to reveal a good part of my thighs.

“It changed, what I think about when I think of you,” she started to answer but she didn’t continue. She shifted her weight entirely to her right hand and swept her left up my exposed leg before entering me quite forcefully. She was just full of surprises today.

“I used to think of your lips mostly and sometimes about your eyes, ” she paused. “Now I think about your eyes all the bloody time. Your eyes when I touched you right, here.” Her soft voice was in stark contrast with her brusque invasion of me, not that I was complaining. I was rapidly coming undone, much like a giant sandcastle on the tide-line when the first waves come rolling in. Every move she made crumbled a piece of my already weakened defences. She smiled contently as she closely observed the effect she was having on me. Her doe eyes glued to me like she wanted to suck the cascading pleasure right out of me, taking in every hitched breath, every move, every moan and every spasm that ran through me. It didn’t take long for me to become completely overwhelmed. My mind and body exploded in perfect unison.

I ascribed my astoundingly quick release entirely to the fact that I was simply unaccustomed to such treatment. I expected her to withdraw her fingers. She did stop moving but stayed in the exact same position. I wrapped my legs around her waist to make her come closer but she didn’t budge.

“You did something to me,” she whispered.  
“I think you just did something to me, my sexy little ex-virgin,” I purred.  
“I’m being serious,” she said and moved her hand aggressively, which made it rather difficult for me to breathe and think.  
“If you are trying to completely unravel me you are right on track,” I gasped. “But if you want to have a real conversation you might consider a different approach.”

She looked at me, shook her head as if to shake off all the things that were seemingly bothering her and continued to drive me to my next climax. Only the second of many it turned out as the evening unfolded. She had a surprisingly ferocious appetite, but I had no problem keeping up with her or making sure the score was even at the end of the line.

We didn’t speak until we were both completely sated and she was naked in my arms, tucked away safely in the crook of my neck.  
“I’m obviously not myself. You did something to me, you must have.”

There it was, the price I had to pay for being so stupidly hopeful against all odds. I had tried to let her go, to send her on her merry way. I had all but pushed her out the door and yet she came back to me, searching for answers, looking to blame me. I hadn’t invited her into my house or even into me, but she needed me to take responsibility for what had happened on two separate occasions now.

I could only imagine what was running through her mind. How she must have felt in broad daylight, surrounded by her friends and had found herself unable to stop thinking of little old me. Apparently our time together had haunted her, flooded her with shame, guilt, darkness and pain. Quite the opposite of what the aftermath of our six hours together had brought me over the past couple of days.

I wished that I could tell her I was responsible. That I could take my wand and make her go away even if it was the last thing I wanted for myself. It would have made life so much easier for her. I couldn’t stand the thought that what was between us was causing her pain, not when she gave me such joy. And this was only the beginning. If by some miracle we both survived the war things would be even more difficult.

“You’re just not gonna say a damn thing?”  
“I don’t know what to tell you. I know what you want to hear though, do you want me to lie to you?”  
“No. I want you to tell me what this is.”

Insanity would be the obvious answer. Maybe it would have made sense if this was just lust but it wasn’t at least not for me. I had no explanation for the way I felt when she was around. The need to be physically close to her in whatever way possible was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. Now I wasn’t an expert in affairs of the heart by any measure. My experiences were limited, but I had been in love once.

It hadn’t lasted very long, so it probably wasn’t a good example. Her name was Morgana Lockhart and at 17 I was so besotted with her that I snuck out of my room every single night to be with her for an entire summer. I remember that feeling well. It was close to obsession but it was also warm and wonderful and exciting. Before that summer we were already together but she was somewhat less inclined to meet me in the room of requirement multiple times a week and risk upsetting Minerva McGonagall. She was a Gryffindor and a mudblood. It appeared I had a type. She was, however, a year older than I was and left Hogwarts before I did. I was completely shattered when she told me, at the end of our summer together, she never wanted to see me again. She called me clingy, needy and overly possessive, said I was smothering her and stomped all over my heart.

After Morgana I had kept my heart to myself. Lesson learned I supposed. But I wasn’t timid about sharing my body. Right up until I married Rod at 19 I was a rather big trollop. I knew what I liked, what I wanted, who I wanted it with and I wasn’t afraid to go after it. As long as it was free.

Whatever this was, between me and Hermione, wasn’t anything like what I had felt for Morgana, and it wasn’t carefree fun either. It was a need that whined pleasantly when we weren’t together, a desire so powerful that it made me question everything and a light in the darkness. Maybe it had to do with it being so long ago that I had let anyone in. Although I hadn’t let her in, not willingly. I couldn’t have. I liked danger and excitement, I lived for the thrill of having a chance of things going pear shaped in nearly all aspects of my life, not when it came to my heart though. I would prefer to leave it unbroken.

That singular taste of heartbreak had put me off love for the rest of my life and this, this weird force of nature was bound to end up in heartbreak.

“Bella please answer me.”  
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”  
“Is this normal? Is this what it’s always like? How do people ever get anything done if this is what it’s like to be.. close.. to someone?” Her fingers played with the white lock of my hair. She had tried to ask me this question right before my Dark mark started to burn and I hadn’t fully understood what she was asking then. I did now, unfortunately I still didn’t have a useful answer.

“Well. I can’t speak on your behalf but for me this is not normal. It’s definitely different from anything I have ever experienced. But I have been alone a very very long time.”  
“So you decided to have me because you were lonely.”  
“Usually I have much better self control in that area. What drove you to abandon all sense and stay with me after I set you free?”

“That’s what I don’t understand. I was fascinated with you before I met you, but I thought it was just, you know.. the fascination of the dinosaur.”  
“The fascination of the dinosaur? Is that supposed to mean something to me?”  
“Just because the asteroid is coming to kill the dinosaur doesn’t mean the dinosaur can’t pause and admire the beauty of the asteroid.*”

“So you thought that you were drawn to me only because I wanted to kill you?”  
“It’s not that strange. A lot of people are attracted to things that could easily kill them. Why else would anyone keep a cobra in a tank?”  
“And you think a lot of people have persistent thoughts about their cobra’s lips?”  
“I never said it was a perfect theory. Anyway I realized that wasn’t the reason pretty soon after Greyback handed me over to you.”  
“When exactly?”  
“When I felt your body on top of me. You were so close to me and I was convinced I was done for. I was scared but I also felt this strange peacefulness and .. other inappropriate things.”  
“You’re such a prude in your words. Only in your words.”  
“I’m not, there just aren’t any words to accurately describe my feelings at the time.” The fingers that had been playing with my hair found their way to my scalp and the way my body responded to that innocent touch was totally out of proportion.  
“I know exactly what you mean.”  
“So you felt it too?”  
“Do you think I often catch myself humping my victims?”  
“I hope not.”

We lost ourselves in each other all over again and when we finally snapped out of it the dark of night had given way to the light of early morning. Hermione had to go back to her own world, to the battle she was fighting and to her friends. I didn’t want to let her go but there was no other option.

She didn’t tell me that she would be back. We didn’t talk about saying goodbye and we never actually said the word. She untangled herself from me, put her clothes back on and disapparated. I missed her as soon as she was gone. The empty cavity in my chest ached. I felt like nothing would ever be okay again if she wasn’t with me, like I couldn’t breathe without her. It didn’t make a lick of sense to me.

I went to bed. My body was exhausted but my mind was restless. I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake staring at the ceiling thinking of the girl that had just left my arms. Wondering what possessed me to let things get this far. Why hadn’t I simply told her to go? The answer was simple but not one I wanted to hear.

Sleeplessness wasn’t a problem I was familiar with. All the horrors I had witnessed, mostly things I had unleashed upon other people myself, had never interfered with my sleeping schedule. Even in Azkaban I had mostly slept like a baby, in spite of the haunted noises my fellow prisoners produced, the constant cold and the threat of the dementors.

Of all possible things in the world, the mere thought of one stupid, sexy girl kept me from my sleep. It was infuriating.

She came back to me the next night, the night after that and every night. We talked in between finding new ways to quench the seemingly never ending hunger that kept overtaking us. It was physically exhausting as well as mindblowing, amazing and wonderfully disturbing. I could feel my old self slipping away from me and I finally truly understood what she had meant when she asked me if this was normal. Being with her made me feel like she was all I wanted out of life and more than once I caught myself wanting to tell her how she made me feel.

I clenched my jaw each time those devastating words threatened to burst out of me in an unguarded moment. I told myself that I was just getting caught up in the moment, that all the physical stuff was clouding my mind. That I didn’t really feel what I thought I was feeling and that for sure she wasn’t either.

I stopped myself because I knew that I couldn’t make more of this than it already was. It was one thing to pop out every night for a casual romp in the hay with your mortal enemy but something else entirely to hear said enemy confess… what exactly?

She came to me every night for two weeks straight, leaving in the mornings without saying goodbye. We talked about lots of things and avoided certain topics at all cost. We didn’t speak of the war, my work or the things she got up to when she left my side. We didn’t talk about what was going on between us.

She told me about her life a lot, probably because the history of my life fell largely within the topics we had silently agreed on not to talk about. I did tell her fragments of my time at Hogwarts, what I’d been like at her age, although I carefully left out all the dirty stuff, and I also told her about what it was like to be a girl in a pureblood family. She talked about her parents as well but in a way that made me suspect some ill had befallen them. I was too scared to ask her what happened to them, afraid to discover one of my former men had taken them from her.

When she wasn’t with me I mostly tried to sleep.

After 13 nights I noticed that she looked like she was sleepwalking when she apparated in. I was tired myself but at least I had nothing that occupied my days. Ever since my little spat with the Dark Lord I hadn’t been back to my sister’s house. I didn’t want to run into to any of my former men or face Lucy’s gloating face. She went back to her regular life every morning after not sleeping a wink. I assumed nobody even suspected that she had been gone, that she hadn’t been sleeping at all.

“You look cream-crackered,” I told her after I kissed her and she seemed relieved that I mentioned it.  
“I want to be with you, I really do but I’m sleeping on my feet,” she apologised. “I tried to stay home so I could get some sleep but .. here I am. I needed to be here, with you.”  
I wrapped my fingers around hers and pulled her up the stairs, straight into my bedroom and lit the candle on my nightstand. She looked around, taking in my heavy four poster bed and black floral patterned wallpaper. So far, we had never made it to my room.

“What do you think?”  
“We haven’t done it in a bed before, is this your bedroom?”  
“Yes, but we’re not going to do anything. You need sleep.”  
“Oh thank god,” she said and threw her arms around me. “I mean, sex yes, I love it, I do. But I can’t sleep when I get home. Usually there is hardly any time left before Ginny comes to wake me. Even if there was it would be of no use cause without exception I am too restless to sleep, even when I’m too tired to stay awake.”

I ignored how painfully familiar the description of her sleeplessness sounded to my ears, pulled her over to the bed and started to take off her clothes.  
“You decided to match your undergarments today.”  
“Yes,” she said and slowly twirled around showing off dark red lace knickers and a matching bra.  
“Ginny took me shopping, which was exhausting as well as inspiring.”  
“Did you pick you this out together? Did she see you like this?”  
“Yes, but she is my friend.”

“I don’t think I like this Ginny person.” I sat down on the bed and looked at her as I started to undo my corset.  
“Are you jealous?”  
“You’d better take that off before I change my mind about letting you sleep.” My corset came loose and I discarded my dress and my own panties, before I crawled over to the far side of the bed.  
“Please stop making me want you.”  
“Come here and get some sleep.”

She slipped out of her brand new underwear and stretched out awkwardly beside me, pulling the blanket up to her neck.  
“Very comfortable,” she sounded surprised.  
“Expected me to sleep in a coffin, did you?”  
She rolled onto her side and faced me.  
“I didn’t expect something quite so luxurious or so gothic.”  
“This is the room I’ve had ever since I was a little girl. I redid the walls a couple of times but the bed is ancient.”  
She inched closer to me.  
“This isn’t your marital bed, is it?”  
“No when I married Rod I moved in with him, his mother, and the rest of his family I suppose but they were much less … present.”  
“His mother? Did he happen to live in the basement and sport a neck beard?” I didn’t understand the reference but deducted that grown men living with their parents wasn’t considered normal in the world she came from.  
“It’s normal for a pure-blood son to never leave his parental home, especially not the heir. Girls leave, sons stay. We’re old fashioned like that. I got my own room at the Lestrange estate because it is uncommon for husbands and wives to share a bedroom. My sister loves her husband very much, but they do not share a room.”

For a few minutes I thought she’d drifted off to sleep, her eyes were closed and she looked pretty and peaceful. I was about to drift off myself when she asked me another question.  
“Are you still married?”  
“Yes but it’s a paper marriage, as arranged when I joined the Dark Lord. We hardly ever see each other. Turn around please.”  
She obliged and I slid one arm under her neck, folded the other around her waist and pulled her into me. She let out a contented sigh and pressed her bum into me.  
“So you and Rodolphus never had sex?”  
“Oh we did, quite a lot too, before Tom basically annulled our marriage. We had to produce an heir, which thankfully never happened.”  
“I don’t like him.”  
“Now you sound jealous.”  
“What was it like? How do I compare to him?”  
“Oh, I dunno,” I breathed into her ear. “He was a lot more manly than you, that’s for sure.”  
I had to fight the urge to let my hands roam when she shuddered in my hold.  
“Is that good or bad? Do you miss the ehm.. dangly bits?”  
“What do you think?”  
“That if you feel like you are missing something there are spells we could try.”

Was this her way of telling me that she felt like she was missing out? When did she have time to look up sex spells, and why did she? Was I reading her all wrong? Didn’t she enjoy what we’d been doing so far? Was I boring her already? If so was she really an ex-virgin or had she lied about that? Perhaps she just wanted to experiment.

“I’m quite happy with your bits personally, but if I’m boring you we could expand our repertoire of course.”  
“What makes you think I’m bored? I’m exhausted from too many mind altering orgasms, not bored.”  
“You’re the one bringing up the old twig and berries, or the lack there of.”  
“Only because you’re also into men.”  
“Says who?”  
“You have a husband!”  
“Only because I was married off, in good pure-blood tradition, not by choice.”  
I finally felt her relax I my arms and she drifted off in seconds. There was something incredibly relaxing about holding her while she was sleeping. A deep feeling of bliss settled over me and my own lack of sleep soon caught up with me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just because the asteroid is coming to kill the dinosaur doesn’t mean the dinosaur can’t pause and admire the beauty of the asteroid* - I heard this in Defiance the TV show and I thought it was a great saying so I used it. I'm not sure if it actually came from the mind of the defiance writers or not, just thought I should mention it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey there, 
> 
> You're still hanging in there and I couldn't be happier. So the next chapter.. it's another rather cute one but I have to warn you it's not going to stay THIS cute. 
> 
> Please read and review!

“Wake up!,” a voice drifted to me from very very far away.  
“Bellatrix Black-Lestrange! Wake up right now!”  
I peeled open one of my lids and Cissy’s angry face was staring right at me from far too up close.  
“Cissy! How nice of you to show up here uninvited. Care to explain why you are screaming at me?”  
“Do you care to explain why I found this piece of trash between your sheets?”  
I sat up and looked in the direction of her pointing finger. My heart skipping a beat when I spotted Hermione. She stood a few feet from the bed wrapped in a sheet. The sun pouring in through the window gave her messy head of curls a golden halo and served to make her improvised garment practically see-through. She looked worried. It took me no effort to imagine what had transpired before I’d opened my eyes and Cissy found us spooning. Hermione wasn’t the first girl she had dragged out of my bed.

I stretched. Judging by the light it wasn’t even morning any more and for once I felt well rested. I hadn’t slept this long in ages.  
“I don’t think I owe you an explanation. You are not my keeper so stay out of it.” I hopped out of bed, not bothering to cover up any part of myself, sauntered over to the sexy little minx, grabbed her by her pretty behind and kissed her, pulling her barely hidden body against me. I didn’t have to look at my sister to know exactly which look would be decorating her face if I did.  
“Good morning, love,” I whispered in her ear. “Better get dressed or my sister might have a stroke.”

“If you are finally done making a display of yourself we can talk, and for Merlin’s sake put on some clothes, both of you. ”  
Hermione didn’t need to be told twice, but I took my sweet time picking out underwear just to annoy Narcissa who was impatiently tapping her foot on the floorboards. When I was finally dressed I turned to her and noticed that she seemed to be about ready to explode. I sighed.  
“Fine. Out with it then, Cissy.”

“How could you? Have you no sense of self preservation? Of all the girls in all the world why her? Are you doing this to get back at me? What did I ever do to you to deserve this?,” she was channelling my mother directly. “Do you even realize what a precarious position you’re in, were already in before I found you cuddling up to the enemy? The very girl that you let escape. Do you have any idea of the lengths Lucius had to go through to persuade the Dark Lord that you were a harmless lunatic not worth the avada kedavra? Do you know how close you came to being killed?”  
“Cissy please, don’t be dramatic. So Tom was a little angry, he’ll get over it eventually.”  
“TOM?! You think he is still the same man, your old friend, but he’s not. Why can’t you see that?”  
“I have to believe that Tom is still in there, if he’s not I would have been better off having a litter of mini Rods.”

“You are bloody unbelievable! You are a child! You committed yourself to this, to him, you can’t back out now and you sure as hell can’t go around fucking mudbloods, specifically not this one, not if your life means anything to you.” She jabbed her pointer finger at my chest repeatedly.  
“I did commit myself to Tom and his, decidedly, flawed ideas. What I didn’t do is sign up for a life in servitude to a man who spends half his days talking to his beloved snake and the other half talking about how much he wants to kill a boy. And they call me crazy!”  
“She got to you didn’t she? My god Bella how far gone are you? You are gonna get yourself killed. This isn’t about supporting an ideology, not any more. There is no room for grey areas. You are in or you are dead. And I’ll be damned if I lose another sister to a bloody mudblood!”

My eyes drifted to the girl in question who was awkwardly standing in a corner of the room, close enough to the door to get out fast. I smiled at her and when she smiled back at me it felt like she sucked all the gravity out of the room and I was floating.  
“Please Bells, help me understand. What is the deal here? What is this hold she has on you, which spell has she put you under that makes it worth it to risk both our lives just so you can be with her?”

It’s not like I hadn’t asked myself the same question before, but now that my sister posed the question the answer became more and more clear to me.  
“Do you want to die?”  
“No. Not anymore. I’m finally, completely alive, Cissy and it’s bloody brilliant.”

“Oh god. You have gone completely off your rocker, haven’t you? Please stop and think for a minute. Please listen to me. Now is not the time to do anything but lay low and hope the Dark Lord will forgive you in time. You can’t run around banging the boy’s bestie. What if someone other than me had found you here?”  
“You know as well as I do no one but you ever comes here and no one cares about what I do.”  
“Still! You have to stop this, right now. Tell me it’s over between you, promise me! And this time keep your promise.”

I laced my fingers through my sister’s and stared at our connection as I wasn’t sure it would last very much longer.  
“I can’t.”  
“Why on earth not? Please. What are you telling me?”  
“I can’t stop seeing her,” I squeezed her shaking fingers.  
“Bella look at me! Why not? I have to hear you say it.”  
I looked up, right into her colourless, frozen eyes. She was even more pale than usual.  
“Because I love her.”  
Immediately she jerked her hand from mine, I expected her to slap me but she didn’t. She stood and stared at me for a long while. She was reading my mind. She wasn’t practised in wandless magic but her affinity for legilimency was great and she hadn’t needed a wand to pry into my mind in a long time.  
“You do not love the mudblood, it isn’t possible,” her voice shook as well as her body.  
“I do.”  
The slap I’d been expecting finally landed on my face.  
“Do you hear what you are saying? You can’t love her! You barely know the girl.”  
“I know her very well in the biblical sense.”  
“Exactly my point. This is pure lust and it has to end. Now. Just stop seeing each other and this will all blow over.”

For Narcissa it was that simple. Just stop seeing the girl and forget all about her. For me it would have been easier to cut off my own arm, especially after the excellent night of sleep we had just shared. My mind wasn’t fogged over by lust or lack of sleep, quite the contrary, everything was extremely clear. Hermione had grabbed my heart. She tore it right out of my chest and held it in her hand like it was nothing. I didn’t think she even realised she did it.

Our discussion went on for a bit but we had reached a clear impasse. I couldn’t explain to her how Hermione made me feel or how she had rearranged me during the first six hours we ever spent together. Narcissa didn’t want to hear any of it, the same way she had never wanted to hear any of my comments about Lucy, or our cause and the role we didn’t play in it, being females. She dismissed my arguments because in her mind me being with Hermione was unacceptable for more than one reason. She actually bought into all that bloodpurity hogwash and was convinced my little filthy fling would cost me my life.

She wasn’t wrong. Sleeping with the Hermione was a betrayal of everything our side stood for and the fact that she was so close to Harry Potter only made it worse. Narcissa wouldn’t stand for any of it and if I had been anyone else but me she would have tattled to the Dark Lord immediately and seized Hermione. I could tell that she was very tempted to take the girl, but she was well aware that doing so would break our sisterly bond forever. Even if she didn’t believe my feelings were true she did realise that at the very least I was attached to the girl.

Relief washed over me when she finally pursed her lips in disapproval and disapparated. Then it hit me that I’d told my sister more about my feelings for Hermione than I had ever shared with the girl, who was still standing in the same place, like a berated schoolgirl standing in the naughty corner, well within earshot. Suddenly I felt bad.

“Come, I’ll have the elves make us breakfast.”  
“You have elves?”  
“Technically Narcissa has elves.”  
“You employ slaves.”  
“What? No. What are you talking about?”  
She crossed her arms and gave me a sour look.  
“Do you pay your elves?”  
“No.”  
“That makes them slaves.”  
“They live with me, they can do what they want, eat what they want, go wherever they want.”  
“In between the unpaid chores you force them to do for you, you mean?”  
“They clean a little and one of them mostly cooks. I’m not running a perfect household here, they’re used to working much harder at my sister’s. Two elves is more than enough.”  
“They just always have to answer promptly when you call and are probably scared of you. Do you punish them when they screw up?”  
“No, I did tell Rommy off a little when she nearly burned down the kitchen but they’re like pets. They like to hang around me a lot. It’s cute.”  
“They’re sentient beings who live in permanent slavery!,” she barked.  
“Yes. They live to serve because that is what they want!”  
“Because they have no choice!”  
“Of course they do. They live in our houses, prepare our food, clean. It’s been like this for centuries. The number of elves in a household usually outnumbers the number of people greatly. They have families, they live amongst us, and in exchange they do chores because it makes them happy.”  
“I have real trouble believing that! They are subservient and they do your dirty work! Who would choose to live that way?”  
“They are magical creatures who do not need a wand to practice magic. If they were unhappy about their situation they would have risen up by now to free themselves. Or do you think they are so incapable of independent thinking that they wouldn’t think of that?”  
She didn’t answer but her face was still scrunched up in anger.  
I kissed her cheek and went downstairs.

It took her thirty minutes to join me for breakfast. She sat across from me and silently ate her toast. I didn’t really understand why she made such a big deal over elves. Maybe it was a muggle thing.

“You look adorable when you’re mad.”  
“I know you don’t understand why I would even care about elves.”  
“I do. You can’t stand what you perceive as injustice, but I don’t think you understand the nature of what an elf is, what they want.”  
“Fine. Let’s just agree to disagree.”

I expected her to tell me that she had to go, dreaded the moment she would.  
She stayed without mentioning it. She stayed and everything felt easy and light. My usually gloomy home came alive in her presence. It felt warm and comfortable for a change. Having her here with me while the light of day was pouring through the windows made everything that was going on suddenly seem more real. This wasn’t just some frenzied midnight meeting of bodies. It had never been. This was my soul longing to be with her soul and our bodies trying to merge into one.

She asked me about what had happened between me and the Dark Lord after I’d let her go that day and I told her exactly. I explained to her how what had happened between us had changed everything. That she made it impossible for me to do what I used to be quite good at and how that had made me question everything, every choice I’d ever made. Which caused me to blow up at the Dark Lord. I even told her that I’d been pretending to be crazy ever since I broke out of Azkaban and the exact words Voldemort had used when he benched me.

Once I’d told her that I cracked open like a cantaloupe under a knife, spilling my guts in an unstoppable stream of words. I told her about my sister and how she had been the pillar of my existence. I’d never before felt the need to open up like that and it felt completely natural. She listened closely, her eyes never leaving my face. She had taken her usual spot on top of me, and asked me all kinds of questions. I answered them, honestly. It felt good.

When I was done she rewarded me by peeling of her clothes and giving me her body.

Time ran away from us. Before we were done it was night again.

“Won’t your friends be worried about you?,” I had to ask. She couldn’t stay here forever not even if we both wanted her to. It wasn’t right to purposely keep her from her life.  
“I left them a note explaining my absence, told them I would be staying with my aunt for a little while. They think I’m all messed up you know, traumatized. They think you broke me and I’m not sure you didn’t.”  
“I’m sorry. If I hadn’t been so selfish we wouldn’t be in this mess. I’m so sorry.”  
“I’m not. How can I be sorry if this is the best thing that has ever happened to me?”  
“Is it?”  
“Yes, that’s what it feels like. It’s also the strangest thing and that’s saying something. It’s a good strange, the absolute best. I don’t want this to end. I don’t want to be away from you, not for a another minute. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

I smiled. To me her confession was the sound of my dreams coming true, but for someone who claimed that being with me made her happy she looked rather miserable. What if it would always be like this? If the price of me being happy would always leave her in the middle? One foot in bliss the other in misery? That wasn’t what I wanted for her. She deserved to be happy more than anyone, certainly more than I did. So how was it fair that someone like her, an innocent girl, suffered under the weight of her mystifying feelings for a woman like me, while I only felt like I was drowning in happiness? Why did she get the short end of the stick? It was beyond unfair.

“What can I do for you? How can I make you happy?”  
Her eyes widened and for a short moment they shone with pure adoration.  
“You meant what you told your sister, didn’t you? You love me. You actually love me! Were you ever going to tell me?”  
“No.”  
“Why not? Don’t you think I might like to know those kinds of things? Don’t I deserve to know how you feel about me?”  
“You deserve everything. All the good things in the world, you really do.”  
“I’ve been dying to know how you feel! To know that I’m not going crazy, risking everything for casual sex. I would have liked knowing that I’m not alone here. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”  
“Many reasons.”  
“Such as?”  
“It’s crazy, my sister is right. I barely know you.”  
“I think you already know me better than any of my friends do. That is not a reason.”  
“Look at yourself, you’re miserable. You’re already torn between this bubble we’re in together and your real life. Why would I tell you something that is bound to make this even more difficult for you without it really changing anything? You are bound to your friends, to your side and I’m bound to my sister. I can never join the order or openly betray the Dark Lord. If I do so my sister will die and she is the only person in the world who has always had my back, who cared for me beyond sense. I won’t risk it. This war will end and if I love you, which I do, I will lose no matter who wins. Why would I want to put you in the same position? You are so young and you can find love anywhere. You don’t need my love and you shouldn’t want it. I keep trying to tell myself I need to end this but you render me powerless.”

“I love you too,” she said like it was the most logical, natural thing to say. She even sounded quite happy about it. The dark grey cloud that had been looming over her lost its grip on her and she beamed. Her smile completely and utterly happy for a change. No doubts, no reservations. She was happy enough to make me cry and I couldn’t tell if they were happy tears or not.

My heart felt like it was growing too big to fit inside my chest, like it was about to burst. My heartbeat went through the roof and suddenly a feeling like a bunch of knives were jabbed into my chest came over me so unexpectedly and unbearably painful that it made my whole body contract. I thought I was dying and how ironic it was for my heart to give out like that at the apex of my happiness, like it couldn’t handle the bliss overload. I thought for a split second that god was real and punishing me for my intolerable cruelty towards everyone, even the very girl that I loved. Like some sort of divine intervention to release the innocent girl in my arms from my venomous hold on her.

Hermione was panicking. Asking me what was wrong a dozen times. I couldn’t answer her due to the gruelling sensation consuming me. I could barely breathe. Suddenly her eyes moved to my chest and stayed there. She stopped asking me what was wrong, just stared at me as if she was witnessing a small creature with very sharp teeth gnawing its way out of my chest cavity, which wasn’t far off from how whatever was going on with me felt like. Eventually the pain started to subside, leaving me sore all over.

“For a moment there, I thought I was gonna pop my clogs, love.”  
“Bella what is that?,” she asked, continuously running her finger over the same spot of my skin, right between my breasts as if she was tracing something. I had no idea what she was on about, and then I noticed it.

Half between her gorgeous breasts and half on the right slope of her left globe, a colourful drawing of a feather adorned her skin. It was beautiful and very detailed, you could easily make out the individual barbs that made up the feather. It was a deep indigo blue at the top and bright orange at the quill, in between were gradients of sea green and scarlet. I was pretty certain it was the tail feather of a phoenix. The whole thing was about the size of a small hand.

It had appeared out of nowhere. I didn’t have to look in the mirror to know that the exact same image was etched into my skin, that this beautiful involuntary tattoo was the reason I had felt like I was dying just moments ago.

I knew exactly what it was and what it meant. Considering it only took me one look at the thing to recognise what it meant, I was disappointed that I hadn’t grasped what was going on sooner.

“Bella did someone curse you? Was it your sister? It does look quite beautiful for a curse.”  
“No, no one cursed me.”  
“Then what is it, it wasn’t there before right? You didn’t masque your tattoo with a charm or anything, did you? I mean your number 93 tattoo has always been there but this just popped up.”  
“It wasn’t there before, but I guess it has been coming.”  
“Bella… tell me, is it bad?”

It wasn’t good. It was terrible if you valued exorcising your own free will, because this little piece of art was a clear sign that it wasn’t free will that had driven me in the past weeks. It was bad because I didn’t know how to explain getting a new tattoo to the Dark Lord. It was horrible because it was like a neon sign of my relationship status. But above all it was disastrous because of what it meant, especially given the situation we were in. The bloody thing was bound to get us both killed. Something so ominous shouldn’t be allowed to look so beautiful and innocent.

“I need to talk to my sister.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey :) 
> 
> I'm running out of stuff to say, or maybe I need a personality transplant. All i can say is that I'm happy even with the more demanding comments :P I can't promise anything but rest assured I will take into consideration your wishes. 
> 
> Anyway, on to the next chapter I guess. So far it looks like at least one person will be satisfied and in spite of me being not a very nice person I do aim to please :) 
> 
> Please read and review. 
> 
> Thank you for hanging in there with me!

Narcissa was less than amused when I barged into her bedroom and caught her and her husband in quite a compromising position. A position that would have made me snicker in any other situation. It seemed the squirrelly twit was good for something after all.

“Get out, I need to talk to my sister,” I barked at him and hearing my voice forced Cissy’s eyes wide open. She looked at me in shock, quickly covering herself up with her wand. Lucius got up quickly, grumbling something about how his wife needed to get some control over her lunatic sister while storming off. I plopped down on the bed right besides her.

“This better be good Bella, I do not take kindly to being disturbed at a time like this for nothing.”  
“You mean the old albino is more a rabbit than a carpet muncher? I’m sorry for interrupting your yearly treat, Cis, but if Lucy is being an inattentive husband you should do something about it. Have you tried imperio?”  
“Enough! Please tell me you didn’t burst in here just to discuss my love life,” she squealed, her face bright red.  
“As a matter of fact I came here to discuss mine.”  
She made a face like she smelled food that had gone off.  
“Unless you’ve come to tell me that you ended things with the mudblood I don’t want to hear it. Please tell me you have. ”  
“No.”  
“In that case you ruined my night for nothing!”

“Cissy, no. Look at my chest,” I unbuttoned the vest that I had put on for the sole purpose of covering up the mark that a corset alone wouldn’t hide.  
She stared at it.  
“It’s beautiful, very different from the dark mark of your prison tattoo but I suppose this is the first one you actually picked out yourself.”  
“No I didn’t. She has one too.”  
She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “So you got matching tattoos. A little immature in my opinion and stupid considering the circumstances and the fact that it would be in everyone’s best interest if no one were to find out about your disgusting little fling. It is not, however, a reason to disturb me during my.. private time.”  
If anyone had told me yesterday that my sister was so attached to her naked time with Lucius, I wouldn’t have believed them, but in front of me resided the proof. She was genuinely miffed about me interrupting them.

“Cissy look at it. It appeared out of nowhere.”  
She stared at my chest and paled, then she brought her hand to my chest and touched the feather. Sparks flew everywhere and she was pushed back violently.  
“No!,” she cried out, the full scale of what I’d been trying to tell her finally seeping in.  
“Bella no! How could you have let this happen? This makes everything ten times worse.”  
“I obviously didn’t have a choice in the matter. You’re a healer, do you know of any way to...”  
“There is no way,” she interrupted me. “Merlin knows there is no way to fix this. What will we do? If the Dark Lord finds out he will have every reason to kill you.” My sister was never one to quickly lose hope, to believe a situation was completely damned with no way of fixing it, but when I looked in her eyes I could see that she had no hope for a positive outcome at all. She took my hand and we sat silently for a while.

“Have you told her what it means?”  
“I don’t know how. How can I tell her what this means? She’s the one getting the shitty end of the stick here.”  
“You’re wrong. You are the one getting the short end. Our Lord wants her dead, you do know that, don’t you? If we win it will be the end of you!”  
“If our side loses it will also be a death sentence. I can’t fight, Narcissa. I have a huge target on my back and I don’t want her to die.”  
“I’m much more worried about that mudblood getting you killed!,” she screamed at me suddenly. “You have to fight beside him or you will be doomed anyway.” She jumped up and started pacing, then she grabbed me by the wrist and apparated us to my house, to Hermione who was sitting in my favourite chair, staring at the flames.

The brunette got up as soon as she saw me.  
“Oh god, I think I’m gonna be sick,” my baby sister groaned while looking at my chest. When I looked down I saw the mark had lit up. Hermione was wearing one of her bulky sweaters but even through the thick fabric I could see the glow of her mark. She was staring at my chest like she was hypnotized.  
“Why is it doing that?,” she asked, completely ignoring the presence of my sister. She touched my chest, making pleasant fireworks shoot down my spine and the mark stopped glowing.  
“It’s because you are here,” I answered.

“What does your weird tattoo have to do with me?”  
She obviously hadn’t noticed the mark on her own chest yet.  
“You have one too, mudblood,” my sister chimed in, charming as always.  
“I do?” She pulled her sweater over her head and tried to look at her own chest. I traced the outline of the feather on her skin and she gasped when she felt the magic flowing through her.  
“What is this?,” she stammered and for a few moments I couldn’t stop touching her because it felt too good and I loved watching that familiar dreamy expression settle on her face.

Narcissa coughed.  
“If we could all keep our hands to ourselves for a while and just sit down and have a conversation, it would be greatly appreciated. I think this calls for a drink, Bells.”  
I went to get a bottle of firewhiskey and three glasses that I put down on the coffee-table. Hermione had put her sweater back on and taken a seat on the couch, across from my sister who sat on the other couch. I sat down next to Hermione, but at a distance as to not make my sister more uncomfortable than necessary.

Narcissa poured the glasses and then began to speak.

“Once upon a time there was a great powerful wizard who was also a King. He had a daughter, Amora, who was said to be the most beautiful girl in all the land, and when the time came for her to be wed, there was a long line of suitors hoping to win her hand in marriage.

The King never asked his daughter who she wanted to spend her life with. Although he loved her very much, he also saw her as a possession he was unwilling to part with for the wrong price. He offered her hand to whoever could offer him the most wealth in return.”

“Much like most modern pure-blood families do nowadays,” I chimed in.  
“Shut your mouth and listen to the rest of the story,” Narcissa shut me up.

“Eventually, the King reached an agreement with the ruler of a neighbouring Kingdom. The man was much older than his daughter, but he offered a large sum of gold and to expand the boundaries of the Kingdom into his own territory. If the girl would marry him, their heir would rule both countries and until then the two Kingdoms would be as one.

When the King informed Amora of her upcoming wedding, she stubbornly told him that she would rather die than marry someone she didn’t love. What she didn’t tell him, however, was that she had already given her heart away to the lowly son of the royal baker.

The King didn’t care much for his daughter’s opinion on the matter of her wedding and proceeded to plan for the joyous occasion. But when he tested his daughter’s purity on the night before her wedding, he discovered she had already been with a man.”

“He used a spell to test her purity,” I clarified. “You can’t leave that detail out, Cissy. I don’t want my little muggleborn to think the old king was a pervert as well as a tyrant.”

Cissy rolled her eyes and continued talking.

“The king was furious because he knew the wedding and his pile of gold would fall through if Amora’s future husband were to discover that she wasn’t pure. He tried to force his daughter to disclose the identity of her lover but she refused to tell him anything, because she knew her father would kill the man she loved.

So the King cast a spell to make a visible mark appear on his daughter and the man she loved, and started searching for the culprit. When his search lead him to the Royal baker’s house he didn’t find just one marked man, but 8. Amora’s lover had understood what the mark meant when it suddenly appeared and in order to confuse the king all of his brothers had put the exact same mark on their chests.

The king had anticipated this and took all 8 brothers back to his castle and as soon as Amora and her lover were in the same room, both marks lit up and the king could easily identify the man who had stolen his daughter’s chastity.

Amora pleaded with her father to let her lover live, telling him that she couldn’t live without that love. The king was filled with rage and killed the boy anyway, refusing to listen to his daughter. But once Amora’s lover was dead, Amora collapsed as well, using her dying breath to tell her father that she had bound their souls together to ensure that she never had to face life without her love.

The king was powerless to save her and as he watched his daughter die he finally realised that some things on life are more important than wealth. He couldn’t continue living knowing what he had taken away and ended his own life.

That is the legend of Amortentia, the kind of love the potion was named after,” as soon as Cissy finished talking she picked up her glass and emptied it in a few quick sips. I’d never seen my sister drink like that.

“You said no one cursed you,” Hermione spoke up. “Is that true or did someone find out and..”  
“No dear mudblood,” my sister interrupted her. “No one cursed either of you, which isn’t to say that Amortentia isn’t a curse.”  
“I don’t understand. I’ve read a lot, but I’ve never heard of that story before, nor have I read anything about Amortentia being named after anything. Why is that? What does that story have to do with me and Bella? What does it mean?”

“Everyone has a soulmate,” Narcissa explained calmy, much more calmly than I could have. “One person whose soul matches theirs perfectly. This is not common knowledge but an ancient belief, and one there are very few examples of. A person’s soulmate could be anyone, anywhere on earth. The chances of actually running into your soulmate are negligible. Most people never meet theirs and still live perfectly acceptable or even happy lives with someone whom they’re not destined to be with. Think of it as vials and stoppers, not every stopper fits on every vial, only one was specifically made for it, but there are still a lot of stoppers that will do the trick.”

“If finding your soulmate is an actual option then why don’t more people try to find theirs? Why isn’t it even common knowledge? Don’t people want to know who they are destined to be with before marrying a random person who might not fit half as well?,” the girl next to me asked. I looked at her and then the realisation set in.“Wait. You’re saying that me and Bella are soulmates?”

“Unfortunately, yes. You and Bella are made for each other, that’s why those marks showed up,” Cissy couldn’t have looked more sour if she’d tried.  
“Really? But who put them there?”  
“We did, by being together,” I answered.  
“Most likely by confessing your undying love for each other,” Narcissa added while rolling her eyes.

“But if it’s something good like that, then why did it hurt you when the mark appeared and not me?”  
“That pain was the feeling of your souls and magic merging. I’m not sure why it caused Bella such pain, maybe because she’s stronger than you are or because, unlike you, she has used dark magic before.”  
“So this is dark magic then?”  
“No. It’s not a spell someone cast, no one did this to you. It’s merely the result of the compatibility of your souls and your magic. It’s ancient, raw magic that naturally occurs. It’s very rare, only a few documented cases exist in this century, and there is no antidote. You can’t unbind your souls. As a result spending time apart, especially prolonged periods of time will likely not be much fun from now on. You can’t remove the mark or cover it up with a charm. ”

“So this is the reason why I couldn’t stay away when I should have.”  
“Yes. On the upside, you can no longer say that you’re risking it all for nothing more than a disgusting little fling. This thing between you is the real deal and most people can only ever dream of finding it.”  
I looked at Hermione as she sat next to me. She looked flabbergasted but also pleasantly surprised and slightly apprehensive.

“And the downsides?,” she asked softly while grabbing my hand.  
“Neither of you can fight in this war and my sister really needs to fight, if she doesn’t our Lord will kill her. Which leads me to the next problem, mudblood. If by some miracle you survive the upcoming battle and we win, the Dark Lord will kill you, which will kill Bella.”  
“If he does, won’t that just solve your problem? You don’t seem exactly thrilled about me and Bella being together.”  
“Merlin’s balls, mudblood, are you deaf or retarded? If one of you dies, the other one dies as well.”  
“What?”  
“Deaf it is then, good to know. Let me spell it out for you. If you get yourself killed Bella will die. It may take anywhere from five minutes to 24 hours but she will die.”  
“That doesn’t make any sense! That is..” Tears started forming in those beautiful brown eyes which infuriated Narcissa.

“For Merlin’s sake mudblood! Stop being so selfish! Or is your filthy mudblood brain too small to understand what this means? You are not the one at risk here. Bella knows how to handle a duel, do you? Because the way I see it you are the one who is going to get her killed, not the other way around! Stop acting like a child and think! What do you..”  
“Narcissa shut up,” I tried to nip the rest of her undoubtedly long winded lecture in the bud, which earned me a nonplussed glare but did have the desired result.

I focused my attention on trying to comfort Hermione, who seemed inconsolable. I tried telling her that everything was gonna be fine but I really had no clue how it could be. When I looked up I saw my sister was crying as well. I was stunned. I could count all the times I’d seen her cry on one hand, even when she was a little girl. She’d always been strong, not one to give into emotions, stubborn. Watching her cry was disturbing. I felt powerless.

“Come here, Cissy,” I told her while reaching my hand out to her. For once she listened. When she walked over to me it wasn’t hard to see the stubborn little girl she’d once been. I wrapped my free arm around her when she sat down on my other side and then I was surrounded by my two favourite people in the world.

Even though I felt ill equipped to console either, I also felt blessed to have both of them. I knew I was lucky that there were two people left in the world who cared whether I lived or died, but mostly because after everything I had done I was still able to love someone at all. The mudblood and the prissy pure-blood housewife crying on both the shoulders of evil old me. It was strange enough to make me snicker, earning me concerned looks from both women, which only made me laugh harder.

“Oh come on girls! Loot at yourselves! This is practically group hug, your arms are touching,” I blurted out between shrieks of laughter.  
“My sister has a very strange sense of humor.”  
“She does, doesn’t she?,” Hermione agreed.  
“It’s ironic,” I tried to explain. “Just three weeks ago I was ready to die and now that I’m not, death seems pretty much unavoidable. The thought of you dying is unbearable, Hermione, trust me it is. I should be falling apart but all I feel is lucky.”  
They both looked at me in complete astonishment.  
“To have something left to live for,” I added. “I think we can all agree that it’s more than someone like me deserves really.”  
“Bella!,” they started to protest in perfect unison and then started to laugh as well, their voices coming together beautifully. I hugged both of them tighter, ignoring Cissy’s attempt to wriggle herself free from me.  
“Just give into the group hug, Cissy.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup, chapter 8 please enjoy!

The group hug ended when Hermione suddenly jumped to her feet.  
“We can’t stay here, we have to go in hiding.”  
Narcissa also stood up and the strangest scene started to unfold in front of me. The two women in my life started discussing my future like I wasn’t even there. They got so totally caught up in making a plan for me and Hermione that neither of them noticed that Cissy no longer referred to Hermione as mudblood. They were rapidly devising a plan, a plan that went into shocking amounts of details and once it reached completion my sister left to do her part of the work.

She was gonna set up a fund and transfer the money to Hermione’s account so that Hermione could transfer it once more. Their plan was insane and by no means a long term solution. In my opinion it wasn’t even viable, but I didn’t have a better solution. Staying here would inevitably lead to Hermione’s dead, which was the last thing I wanted, so I agreed to what they had come up with.

We would first visit Hermione’s muggle aunt, her mother’s sister, who in spite of Hermione obliviating her parents, had still retained the knowledge of her existence. She hadn’t stopped sending her niece letters. It sounded like a botched up job to my ears, but to be fair, obliviate is a very complicated spell. It wasn’t supposed to leave any loose ends like that, but inexperienced casters often left unwanted traces behind.

We would be staying with this muggle woman, who lived outside of the UK, so that Hermione and I could make arrangements to start our own muggle life. Narcissa and Hermione seemed convinced that disappearing into the muggle world would be our best bet. In general Voldemort’s followers were not at all interested in the muggle world, so there was some logic behind the thought. We would wait out the war initially, but Hermione hinted at the two of us staying in the muggle world for good, she obviously thought that would be best, no matter the outcome of the war.

My little minx was so hopeful while explaining these plans to me, so convinced that we would make it out of this war alive this way that I didn’t have the heart to disagree. I could tell she enjoyed making to do lists in her mind, planning stuff, not something I ever enjoyed doing.

The more I thought about it, and listened to her planning things, the more I became convinced it could actually work. If we fled we would probably live, we could build a life, have each other and live happily ever after. I just wasn’t completely convinced either of us would ever really be happy. I would probably never see my sister again and she would lose everything she had left. Her friends, her identity as the brightest witch of her age, her future. If her side won, if she could safely return to the wizarding world in theory, she still wouldn’t be able to because of me. If my ex Lord won we would also have to hide because of me. No matter what we did I would always be someone very much wanted dead by both sides.  
I knew the long term consequences of her plan evaded her in this moment. All she saw now was a light at the end of a very long and winded dark tunnel. All she felt was hope, but that was likely to change. She had told me exactly how she had felt when McGonagall had showed up at her house to tell her that she was a witch. She’d described it as the best day of her life and this plan, her plan, would take all of that away from her. Not only that. Hiding herself away would also mean that she wouldn’t be helping her friends defeat the Dark Lord. She would be abandoning them in their hour of need, which was something that would surely haunt her for a long time. I was afraid she’d blame for it one day, even if I knew I wouldn’t be able to talk her out of this idea any time soon.

I swallowed my reservations. I didn’t have a better way to protect her, there wasn’t one, so I cooperated. I let her take me into muggle London to take my muggle picture and helped her forge muggle papers while I tried to get used to the idea of living amongst non magical people. It wasn’t easy. I found it hard to imagine how muggles did anything. I had a thousand questions that she happily answered, but most of her answers only lead to more questions.

Even the things I seemed to be able to grasp I didn’t understand. Like this little box she took me into to take my picture. Apart from there not being anyone to snap the picture, I understood why the inside of the box flashed. I understood why she had to put coins in the slot on the outside but I had no idea how the thing was able to spit out four identical copies of the same small portrait of me. The pictures didn’t move, but they were in colour. It was all very magical for something that had no magic behind it.

It got me thinking about all the muggle buildings that surrounded us and how those muggles had constructed them without using any magic. The cars that zoomed around the city also fascinated me. How did they work? What made them power? I had never given any of these things any thought before. I’d always thought that muggles weren’t civilized, hardly more than beasts, but that was far from the truth. They had their own form of magic, Hermione called it electricity.

In preparation for our time with her aunt she gave me a crash course in all non magical things. She took me into a couple of stores and pointed things out to me.

This is a television, it shows moving pictures and has sound, recordings of life, like a pensieve in a box, but the images are not someone’s memories. Most things on it are made up, played out by people, actors, like a play. But there are also more realistic depictions of life on it, news, talkshows, a lot of different things.

“How do the pictures get in the box?”  
“They are broadcast, there are multiple channels to watch.”  
“So people sit down in front of this box and watch other people’s imaginary lives? That sounds dumb, are you sure?”  
“Yes.”

This is a fridge, you store food in it that needs to stay cold, this is a freezer, you can store food in it longer because it freezes things. Dishwasher, to clean the dishes. Microwave, to unfreeze food and sometimes prepare it too. Hairdryer, electric stove, heather, telephone, mobile phone, video recorder, cd player, washing machine, dryer, computer.

All these words, these appliances and their uses, all of these things powered by that invisible force that wasn’t magic, yet very magical, electricity, were enough to make my head spin. And they were only the tip of the iceberg. I was in awe of how much I didn’t know.

Next up was a clothing store. I didn’t understand why I needed muggle clothes. I’d always worn corsets and dresses, not counting my Azkaban wear. My body was used to them and I liked the way they looked on me. They were comfortable, as much a part of my identity as my hair and I didn’t want to part with that look. Hermione assured me that I’d look good in anything and that I’d stand out too much where we were going, dressed like what she referred to as a Gothic queen.

She made me model all kinds of things, pants she called jeans, sweats and cargo pants. The store had so many different kinds of pants it made me wonder if muggle women had something against skirts. She put me in a bright green tracksuit with white stripes and I drew the line at anything that wasn’t black. I drew another line at trading in my boots for what she called sensible shoes. She didn’t understand that I was unwilling to part with the few extra inches my heels gave me.

We settled on a couple varieties of jeans and some slacks, all of which left me with enough room to wear my boots, a bunch of sleek tops with various sleeve lengths a turtle neck and a rather short black jacket with a faux fur trimmed hood.

On our way to the register we came across racks of under-things and I lingered. My eyes were drawn to a mannequin in the middle of the racks, displaying an intricate black lace outfit that served no other purpose than to adorn and display the flesh of the person wearing it. I had never realized there were ways to dress to appear more naked than naked. It was completely vulgar but also inspiring.

“Are all muggles obsessed with dressing up like trollops underneath their boring jeans-pants?”  
“No,” she laughed. “And you can’t keep calling them muggles, especially not to their face, okay?”  
“They’re creative, I’ll give them that.”  
“That would look, erm, interesting on you, Bella. I think I’m starting to understand your obsession with underwear.”  
“Oh, I wouldn’t be the one wearing it, just the one peeling it off.”  
“We don’t need it,” she said and we paid for the things we did need.

We went back to the house where my sister was waiting for us.  
Narcissa looked tired and worry painted her beautiful face. There were dark circles under her eyes and her skin was less radiant than normal. Today I saw our other sister in her, Andromeda. Everyone always harped on about how much Andromeda and I looked alike but personally I saw much more of my middle sister in my youngest, in spite of the obvious dark hair and eyes Andy and I had in common. I hadn’t really given any thought to Andromeda in ages, but suddenly I longed to see her.

“Narcissa!,” I greeted my baby sister enthusiastically. “It’s been a good five minutes. How’s Andy?”  
“Our sister is fine and our niece is a real spitfire.”  
“I knew it! I knew you had stayed in contact.”  
“Not a lot. Not as much as I’d like and lately not at all, too dangerous.”  
“You are still in contact with Andromeda and Nymphadora?,” Hermione asked.  
“She’s as much my sister as Bella, blood-ties don’t come undone that easily.”  
I could tell Hermione had real trouble believing her ears but she didn’t comment. They continued going over their plans, picking up where they’d left off the day before and just like then they didn’t ask for my input, didn’t need it. I didn’t mind, like I said, planning was never my strong point.

 

“I can’t just run and hide Cissy. I have to find a way to undo this.” It was the next day and Hermione had left while Narcissa stayed with me. Cissy was sitting in my chair staring at the flames and I had taken a seat on the armrest, something she would have scolded me for at any other time.  
“You don’t have a choice,” she said softly.  
“There is always a choice. This plan is madness, you do realize that, don’t you? It’s not viable in the long run. I can’t take her away from her life like that, she will hate me for it in the end.”  
“Is she all you can think of? I don’t want you to die. She doesn’t want you to die. This is the best solution.”  
“It’s a terrible solution.”  
Cissy put her hand on my arm.  
“Maybe, but it will buy you time.”  
“Time for what?”  
“I need you safe, out of harm’s way while I find a way to fix this. Just take your little vacation with the mudblood while I sort this out.”  
“You said there is no antidote, no solution.”  
“That was before I did any research.”  
My heart stopped. “You have found something?”

“If the Dark Lord takes one look at that thing on your chest he will know exactly what it is. The bond between you is getting stronger, your magic is changing. He will feel it too and if he does it won’t take him long to figure it out. You have to hide, it’s the only safe solution at the moment.”  
“Cissy you’re killing me! What have you found and where did you find it?”  
“You are not the first person in our family to find herself in this situation,” my sister explained dryly. “I’ve looked into the diaries of our ancestors and I have found something.”  
“Cissa, please, what have you found, tell me,” I dug my nails into her arm to force her to speak up. I couldn’t understand that she seemed so reluctant to tell me. She sighed deeply.

“There is a potion. I will need to do some research but I believe I can do something. It will take time, perhaps more than we have, but I have to try. If I know you are safe I can focus on the task at hand and find a solution.”  
“What kind of potion? If it already exists then what is the problem?”  
“Will you go?”  
I thought about it for a few seconds. I knew the look in her eyes, that specific Narcissa brand of determination. She would not rest until she’d found a way to undo this bond, nor would she tell me what was wrong with the potion until I had agreed to her terms.  
“Yes, yes, I will take my bloody vacation, okay? Tell me about what you found.”

“The potion our great aunt mentions will let one of the two people affected by amortentia live, but it will kill the person who drinks it. Our aunt fed it to the man she was bonded with because he was muggleborn and she didn’t want to bring shame to the family. He died and she lived on. I would give it to you right now if I knew you would do the right thing, however in your current state of mind I don’t trust you to make the right decision.”

I opened my mouth to speak but she interrupted me before I could say a word.  
“Don’t even think about it. I will not lose you. If I was smart I would have given the bloody mudblood the potion without even mentioning it to you, but I am weak. I want to see you happy as well as alive.”

We sat in silence for a while, drinking, even if it was too early for it.

“Do you think the Dark Lord should win?”  
She froze but she didn’t answer me.  
“Well? Do you? Do you think the world will be a better place with him in charge?”  
“Bells, please.”  
“Narcissa answer me.”  
She sighed and clenched her haw.  
“You don’t, do you?”  
She rolled her eyes and the grip she had on my arm would surely leave a mark.

“All I know is that if the Dark Lord loses I will likely lose my husband, my son and my sister, if not my own life.”  
“You don’t know that. Lucius’ involvement, though visible, is rather limited and Draco is just a boy.”  
“You and I both know my husband’s involvement is anything but small.”  
“Yes, but it will be hard to pin any actual crimes on him. He will weasel his way out of any accusations.”  
“Maybe so.”  
“So? Doesn’t that change anything?”  
“No it doesn’t. They want you dead. They won’t send you to Azkaban this time, they will put you down like a rabid dog.”  
“And you think that isn’t exactly what I deserve? What about Andromeda? What will our darling Lord do to her if he has his way?”  
She looked at me and shook her head. That was it, she wasn’t going to let me take this conversation any further. She had made up her mind.  
We drank.

“I’ll miss you. You know I’m no good without my sisters,” she finally broke the silence.  
I ignored the fact that she had said sisters, I knew Narcissa needed both me and Andy to be around to feel whole but I didn’t understand it. Andromeda and I had never gotten on. Cissy always said that we were too much alike. I’d never seen the comparison. My sister was wild, arrogant, impulsive, and I guess those things we did have in common but Andromeda always wanted to be right. Worse than that she had always believed she had all the answer and the moral high ground. Even as a child she always thought that she was the only one who knew anything. She was relentless in all her convictions and never let anything go. I needed Cissy but I didn’t need Andromeda, not since she left us.

“You’re strong. You will be fine without me. You will find a solution and I will come back, everything will be fine, you’ll see,” I promised her but we both knew it could take her forever to alter that potion.  
“I know you can’t feel it, you never could.”  
“Feel what?”  
“The connection between us.”  
“Of course I feel it. You are my sister and I love you.”  
“It’s more than that. You should look Andromeda up, she is not the stubborn know it all you remember, not anymore.”  
“Are you crazy? She would kill me on sight.”  
“She won’t. Of course she won’t, you’re her sister.”  
“That means nothing to her, never has. If it did she wouldn’t have left.”  
“She had no choice, just like you don’t have a choice now.”  
“There is always a choice.”  
“You can’t expect her to do something you yourself won’t do.”  
“What are you on about?”  
“I’m just saying that you and she have a lot in common.”  
“Can’t think of anything.”  
“You both love mudbloods.”  
“Alright, but that’s quite a recent development, doesn’t count.”  
“She has one of those marks as well.”

“What?,” my mind was literally blown. “Poppycock! If my own sister had one of those I would know.”  
“How would you know? Have you had any contact with her at all since she ran away?”  
I hadn’t. In spite of our bad relationship the way Andy had left had always felt like a betrayal to me. I hadn’t been able to understand or forgive her choice. 

Would it have mattered if I’d know the truth? Most likely not. I’d known about the existence of Amortentia my entire life but it had always seemed like a load of bullcrap to me. I’d hardly believed in regular love, let alone this particular kind. A part of me still didn’t. I had started to begin to believe in love the moment Hermione gave herself to me but now that I knew about this bond, things had changed. It felt a lot like love, it did. And I could easily believe that the way I felt about her was real, that I would have fallen for her anyway. But considering the events that had brought us together it wasn’t very likely that Hermione’s feelings were real.

“Why didn’t you try to rid our sister of her affliction?”  
Narcissa stared at me like she had trouble believing her ears.  
“You could have tried then to solve the problem, to break the bond. Andromeda could have stayed with us, without Ted. She didn’t have to love Ted, did she? You could have been working on a way to alter that potion back then. Why didn’t you?”  
“You misunderstand,” my sister drawled. “There is no cure for love. Andy would have always loved her mudblood, just like you will always love yours. Nothing will change that. Even our great aunt never stopped loving the man she killed. What I want to find is a way to keep just one of you alive, so you and Andy can live if the Dark Lord kills your mudbloods. That I think I can do.”

“But that isn’t a solution.”  
“It is for me. I need my sisters.”  
“This love isn’t real, it’s just magic.”  
“Don’t be daft, of course it is real. More real than my love for my husband.”

A crack announced Hermione’s return, the mark on my chest lit up and stayed that way until Hermione put her fingers on it. The pleasure seeping through me was enough to make me gasp, enough to get lost in, but luckily Cissy was there to keep things from getting out of hand.

“It will take one day to transfer that gold to my muggle bank account,” she reported.  
“Great, you should leave tomorrow,” from my sister’s tone you one would never think she cared that she might not see me again for a long time but I knew she was sad. She didn’t leave me until way past her bedtime.  
“Your sister is amazing,” Hermione said once she had gone. “I never imagined myself saying something like that about a Malfory, but she is. Scary and cold and determined and amazing.”  
“She’s not a Malfoy, she just married one. She is a Black.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my readers!
> 
> Please continue reading in chapter 9 and let me know what you think.

We were on our way to a small village in the Netherlands, driving over a small road, right along the coast. Hermione was driving, which was good because I didn’t understand a thing about cars, driving or traffic in general. I didn’t know the rules or even how to operate the vehicle but she did. She didn’t panic every time another car approached us, she manoeuvred through the seemingly endless stream of cars around us like the car was an extension of herself. It was impressive.

I didn’t understand why we needed the car she had bought, we could apparate everywhere after all. She’d told me her aunt would expect us to drive, to have our own transport but I could tell she liked driving, muggle music blaring through the small space we shared. We didn’t talk. I stared at the almost painfully tidy landscape that passes us by.

There was a cadence to the movement of the car, a vague rhythm. It was loud, even with the music droving out the sound of the engine, but it was also warm and comfortable, although the car had a strange smell. Not a very efficient way of travelling but one I could definitely get used to. As long as we were in this little tin can on wheels nothing had really changed yet. This was just a strange outing. I didn’t particularly look forward to reaching our destination.

I had never really met a muggle before, but I had hunted them, not even that long ago. It was a strange thought, unwelcome and one that was surprisingly hard to let go of. They’re people Hermione had told me, they’re no different from you or me. They have hopes and fears and dreams. Things to live for, jobs, families, friends. They’re exactly the same.

I found it hard to believe. How could a person live without magic? What did they even have to live for? I couldn’t imagine it, but I would have to learn. We left the road and my gut clenched.  
“Almost there,” she told me.  
“Are you sure we have to stay with your aunt? We could just book a room somewhere.”  
“You’re nervous, I get it but its not necessary. Rose is very nice.”  
“I’m sure she is, to you, but I’m not family.”  
“You are. You are with me.”

She was obviously convinced of that but I wasn’t. I could only imagine Cissy’s face is Draco brought home a broad like me, or worse, a guy. She wouldn’t be pleased and although I wouldn’t be meeting Hermione’s mother I couldn’t imagine Rose would be thrilled about me and her niece being together. Maybe she hadn’t told her aunt.

 

“Have you informed our aunt of the nature of our relationship?,” I asked casually.  
“Hmm, well I left out the whole soul-mate deal.”  
“How did she respond?”  
“She asked some questions but she was fine with it. She didn’t seem surprised.”  
“Not surprised about me having boobs or about me being like twice your age.”  
“Oh I didn’t tell her that. Maybe I should have.”  
“What?”

She drove into a street filled with identical white houses. So much alike that it seemed unlikely that the people living in them wouldn’t get lost. We drove through rows and rows of houses until she finally parked. I didn’t want to get out of the car and when she unbuckled her seatbelt I took her hand.

“What exactly did you tell your aunt?”  
“That I met someone I really liked and that we would be staying with her a while. I didn’t really tell her a lot about you, come to think of it.”  
“So she’s expecting you to show up with a boy your own age and here you are with me.”  
“Don’t worry, she’ll be fine with it.”  
“How can you be sure?”  
“Did you know same sex partnerships have been introduced in Dutch law at the beginning of this year? ”  
“Same sex partnerships?,” I didn’t have a clue what that was supposed to mean.  
“It’s very close to same sex marriage, which I will imagine will be legal here very soon as well.”  
“You mean two women can get married in this country?” I had never heard of such a thing.  
“Basically yes. They can share custody of children and all that. I’m pretty sure it’s the reason my aunt moved to the Netherlands in the first place.”  
“She moved here that recently?”  
“Nono, she’s lived here for a long time. Her girlfriend was Dutch and she never moved back, says it’s much better here.”  
“So your aunt has a girlfriend? Why didn’t she get married if such a thing is possible now?”  
“Her girlfriend died a few years back. Anyway, it will be fine,” she smiled at me. “Come.”

She pulled her hand out of mine, got out of the car, and got our bags out of the back. Nervous dread settled in my stomach as I hauled myself out of the tin contraption and took both bags from her. I felt strange in this unknown place, wearing black pants, a black top and my new jacket. I was grateful to at least be wearing my own boots but they only helped a little bit. Even knowing her aunt would understand more than anyone else what it meant to be two women and be together didn’t calm me down much. I was still a cradle snatcher and I also had never met anyone who so blatantly supported her own queer choices. The few witches I suspected to be subject to same sex attraction were all married and living double lives.

Hermione rang the doorbell and in no time the door flew open. I could clearly see her in her aunt’s face. The same chin, same cheekbones and the same soft brown eyes. Rose’s hair was a lot darker and not as curly, cut off at her jawline and she was tall, clad in light blue jeans and a white button down shirt. She hugged her niece and when she let go extended her hand to me.

“Rose,” she introduced herself. Her voice a lot lower than Hermione’s, yet faintly similar.  
“Bellatrix.” If the woman was shocked she didn’t let on. She invited us in and a few minutes later we were having tea in her living room, which she served with strange round wafers with a delicious caramel centre.

Hermione had plopped down on the couch like she owned the place and after careful deliberation I had sunk down onto the same couch in the opposite corner, leaving a lot of space between us.

Rose and Hermione were talking a lot about every thing and nothing. It was obvious they were very fond of one another. I didn’t mind being left out of the conversation. I felt uncomfortable enough without having to weigh my words. I felt old, like a perverted cradle snatcher. I felt out of place in the whitest room I’d ever seen. The sofa beneath me was so blindingly white I was sort of scared to stain it just by having a seat. The coffeetable was white as well as the walls, the floor, the ceiling and the strange curtains that appeared to be closed but still allowed me to see strips of the world outside. It was the strangest room I’d ever been in and rather small for a parlour.

The kitchen seemed to be attached to the room, without any doors separating the cooking space. I found it very curious and despite Hermione’s lessons I was unable to identify any of the appliance but the stove. If it was indeed a kitchen I couldn’t find the fridge.  
Hermione slowly but steadily moved closer to me which made me nervous. It was one thing to welcome your niece’s weird choice into your home, but quite another to see her cosying up to said choice. I moved away from her, until I ran into the armrest and couldn’t move any further.

“Bella is a teacher,” I heard Hermione lie to her aunt. It could have been true. Before my lust for power consumed me I had dreams of becoming a teacher. It was a little but true. I had taught my nephew quite a lot of dark spells, not an easy task considering his mediocre affinity for the subject. The only thing the boy really excelled at was potion making, not that there was anything wrong with that. Narcissa had told me that Draco had inherited her talent for healing as well, which, according to the head albino of the house was far from a suitable thing to be good at for a boy. Still, hearing Hermione call me a teacher was strange and her aunt’s reaction was even stranger.

“She taught you, didn’t she. That’s how the two of you met,” she sounded enthusiastic, like an old lady who’s just heard some particularly juicy gossip.  
“Only for a couple of months,” I added to the story. “I was a substitute and Hermione was my best student.”  
“Of course she was,” Rose smiled. “She’s always been smart.”  
“I immediately liked Bella but I didn’t think I stood a snowball’s chance in hell. We’re both done with that school now, so it’s not illegal or anything.”  
“I thought you had another year to go.”  
“I took on extra work, followed extra classes. All that’s left for me to do is take my final exams in May. I think after that I’ll take a year off to see what I want to do next.”

Hearing the girl next to me talk I wondered if that’s what she told herself we were doing. Taking a year off to get her ducks in a row. All of this didn’t sound like something she’d simply made up to appease her favourite aunt. It sounded like what she wanted her life to be like. Like she’d made this plan long before I met her and I was ruining everything just by existing. I had to do something about it, I needed to find a way to put her life back on track, no matter what. I thought of the potion Cissy had mentioned and wished she would have given it to me.

“So what made you decide to visit me? Not that I’m not glad to see my favourite niece.”  
“We just wanted to get away for a little bit.”  
“Away from?”  
“Everything. Well you know what my mom’s like, always nagging me. And my friends didn’t understand it either, especially Ron.”

It surprised me how easily the lies spilled from her lips and they kept coming. She wove a web fit for an acromantula without hesitation or nervous ticks. Nothing gave her away. I could tell she loved he aunt a lot and I assumed she didn’t particularly enjoy lying to her, but I couldn’t tell. Rose didn’t know her niece was a witch, yet they were close. It couldn’t be easy to permanently keep such an amazing and significant part of herself hidden but seven years of lying had made her very proficient at it and now I forced her to lie even more. If she ever reconnected with her friends she would have to lie about me. It was good to know she would be able to without falter, yet somehow it didn’t sit right with me.

All in all it went a lot better than I could have dreamed. Her aunt made us dinner and it was difficult for me not to stare at her muggle cooking. It seemed muggles were proficient at circumventing the really annoying menial tasks in life. I was fascinated, especially when the meal turned out to be really good.

Rose was good company. She obviously lived alone. I admired that. I knew very little of muggle society but in my world a woman living alone was practically an outcast. Apparently everything was very different for muggles. Rose had a job she spoke fondly of, although I had no clue about what that job entailed. Some witches had jobs, mostly mudbloods and those of lower standing. Pure blood women’s only job was to bear their husbands many sons and to organize get-togethers designed only to flaunt their wealth in one another’s faces.

After dinner we settled back in the seating area and I experience television. It was very curious. Just the though of sitting around and watching other people’s lives, real or not, was completely alien to me, some kind of voyeurism and the nature of the moving pictures coming from the small screen was quite shocking to me.

People murdering people for money revenge or sex and other people trying to find out what had happened. The sound was English but there were little letters on the screen translating the whole thing into Dutch. There were so many scantily clad women allowing themselves to be seen in quite compromising positions, showing close to everything. Did children watch this? It was entertaining as well as educational in more ways than one. Were all muggles this free?

Was this the reason that Hermione was such a minx between the sheets? Because her muggle heritage had set her free? I had ascribed her lack of inhibitions to our curious connection and the circumstances under which we’d met. It made sense, there was no point in playing coy with your enemy.

She didn’t compare to any of the other women I’d been with, or maybe my memories were just dusty. The last couple of days that part of our bond had slowed down considerably. With all the planning going on and my sister showing up all the time we’d barely touched. I wasn’t sure exactly why, even though we;d slept together naked, nothing had happened between us since the mark showed up four days ago, but I had a suspicion.

I felt robbed. I thought Hermione and I had got together because we had both wanted to , but it was all just because of some silly magical bond. I have always valued making my own choices, perhaps too much, maybe because I hadn’t been able to make them in a very long time, if ever. To learn that this choice had never really been mine, just part of some mystifying bond, was, disheartening to say the least.  
I couldn’t choose not to love Hermione, I couldn’t stop myself from wanting to be with her, but I could choose not to give in to the siren’s call of her body, even if I wanted to badly. I didn’t want to, until a way to rid us of this unwanted connection had presented itself to me. I was pretty sure Hermione felt the same way, she seemed a lot more hesitant than before.

I didn’t need her, even if every fibre in my body told me I did. I couldn’t trust my body or myself, not anymore. And here I was, in some muggle’s house watching fake people fake hump each-other on a little box and all I could think of was the girl sitting next to me. Her closeness was overpowering, dizzying. It was hard to think with my skin yearning to touch hers, to connect. A girl in red underwear was wrapping her lithe body around a pole on the little screen. She was on a stage surrounded by other, barely dressed girls. She was part of a story that I couldn’t keep track of because my mind kept showing me pictures of Hermione in that position, in those clothes. I wanted her more than ever. Thank god her aunt was right there.

Unfortunately the woman went to bed at around half eleven and we were left alone.

“You were right, she is nice,” I admitted.  
“Told you so,” she smiled.  
“Don’t you mind lying to her so much?”  
She shrugged. “I have no choice, she wouldn’t believe me anyway.”  
“You could make her believe, show her things.”  
She shook her head and put her hand on my thigh. I stood up.

“Bella, what’s wrong?” She came off the sofa as well taking a few steps in my direction and I took another step back.  
“Nothing is wrong.”  
“Why won’t you let me touch you?”  
“Because I can’t think when you do. I can’t think. It’s not real, you know that, right?”  
“Not real? How do you mean it’s not real?”  
“It’s just magic. No free will or real feelings are involved.”

“You can’t be serious,” she said in shock, her eyes saucer sized. “If that’s how you feel then what are we even doing here?”  
“Surviving. Making the best of a bad situation.”  
“A bad situation? Is that all this is to you now?”  
“What would you call it?”  
“Difficult but amazing. I love you Bella that is the realest thing ever.”  
“It feels that way I know but it’s not real. How could it be? It was foolish to think a girl like you could ever choose to love someone like me without there being a magical reason behind it.”

She took two more steps in my direction, effectively making me bump into the bookshelves that were pressed up against the walls.  
“You are so stupid. You are wrong. You heard what your sister told us, and you knew it already. It doesn’t get more real than this. I can feel it and I know you can too.”  
She was right, I did feel it in my abdomen, in my heart, I felt it everywhere, like a sparkly glow inside of me. I loved her more than anything. It was real but it also bothered me.

“When is love ever a choice?,” she asked me rhetorically. “It never is, but if I had a choice I would choose to love you. I love loving you.”  
“But why? There are no upsides to doing so and I barely have anything to give you. You deserve more than that.”  
“All I see is you. It’s hard to care about anything else, especially when you are close, like this.” She pressed her belly into mine and I shivered.  
“And that doesn’t bother you?”  
“No the only thing that bothers me is that you won’t let me touch you, that you think this isn’t real because it is.” She folded her fingers around mine.  
“I’m taking you to bed,” she announced and led me to the room her aunt had assigned to us, up two flights of stairs into another completely white room. Three straight walls one oblique with a large window it.

Were muggles afraid of colour? I’d never felt so out of place in my life. Hermione locked the door behind us and warded the room. Next she pointed her wand at me and I found myself restrained and practically nude. She’d morphed my clothes into the kind of black lace that only made me feel more naked.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there my fave people!
> 
> I've decided it's time to get this over with, so here's another chapter. :)  
> It's pretty much all smut with a twist so feel free to skip it if it's not to your liking. 
> 
> I hope you'll enjoy it while I dig a hole somewhere and wait for the storm to pass.
> 
> Please read and review if you like, it would make me very happy.

“What are you doing?”  
“If you won’t let me touch you I will just have to make you let me.”  
She looked into my eyes and I didn’t recognize her, not completely. Something was surfacing in her that I hadn’t noticed before. She was feral. I didn’t understand what I saw and she didn’t show me for long, she didn’t keep looking at my face.

I was suspended from chains that dangled from the middle of the ceiling, chains that she had conjured up seemingly out of nowhere. If I pointed my toes they touched the floorboards, but only barely. I was completely stretched out before her, my arms high above my head, wrists cuffed to the chains. Not unlike how I had had her in front of me that very first time I laid my hands on her, but it struck me that she found it necessary to actually see me chained up. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind when I was giving into temptation that first day.

“I’m not sure if I want to hurt you or fuck you,” she whispered. She sounded confused but above all hungry.  
“Maybe it’s time to pay you back for what you did to me, I feel like I owe you something,” she mused out loud. Her body pressed up against me and I felt like I was melting, even if she was still fully clothed. She kissed me, all teeth and tongue and hunger to devour me. She was never as soft as I’d imagined she would be, but this was something else.

She reached for my knees and pulled them apart, wrapping my legs around her waist. She let go of my mouth and knelt down between my thighs, my knees hooked over her shoulder. She kissed the core of my desire, holding on to my bum for a moment there I thought she had changed her mind about wanting to attack me but her next move was far less gentle.

She started sucking my most sensitive part so aggressively it hurt and felt divine at the same time. I had no doubt that if she kept it up I would blow in under a minute and I did but that didn’t make her stop.

She went on and on until I was surely leaving a puddle on the ground and I didn’t feel like I had any strength left in my body. I was still hanging by my arms however and unable to get away from the pleasure she was bestowing upon me. I couldn’t think and I could only barely breathe. My arms hurt and my body twisted and bucked within the restraints.

She finally got up, wiped her face on her sleeve and pressed her mouth against my lips, her clothes getting soaked in sweat from my body as she pushed up against me.

She bit my lip and shoved her tongue practically down my throat. I squirmed in front of her when she dug her nails into my skin. I could taste her hunger for me and I felt it in the way her hands grabbed, scratched, pinched and caressed every piece of me she could reach. She alternated between sucking my tongue and biting my lips and when she let go of my mouth she started to lick suck and bite me all over. My entire body was once again filling up with raw desire I couldn’t understand I still had left. In minutes I was shaking within my restraints, again. Feeling like my entire being was aching for her.

Her hand moved between my thighs and she caressed me gently, still enough to make me spasm. I screamed out loud when she suddenly pinched me right there so viciously it brought tears to my eyes. Her lips found my nipple and after sucking it for a while she bit down hard. I let out another scream. It fucking hurt but it didn’t make me want her any less. In fact the pain only intensified my horniness.

Her fingers slipped into me. First one then a second and a third. I doubted I'd ever been wetter. More of her fingers found their way inside me as she continued to draw the pleasure out of me so violently the boundaries between pleasure and pain were quickly evaporating.

She stopped, suddenly removing her hand and looking at my face intently. My vision was hazy but I looked back into her lust filled eyes. They looked much darker than usual and there was a fire burning in that dark brown that made them shimmer like candle flames in a draughty room.

“Come on, tell me you want it.” She moved deeper and faster and it almost felt like she wrapped her fingers around my brains and rearranged stuff. The way she picked up the pace was maddening. My body turned into warm pudding and I couldn’t hold onto a single coherent thought. I noticed my hips were gyrating and feel myself loosening up.

“Open your eyes, look at me.”  
I must have closed them without realizing it. When I forced my lids apart her eyes were like brown marbles, hard and shiny. She looked into me the same way she was reaching into me. Sounds filled the otherwise silent room. There was this wet suction like sound coming from me. I heard her shallow breathing and the rapid pounding of my heart . There was more noise coming from my throat that overpowered every other sound in the room. A sort of growling howl followed by muttered whispers confessing how much I loved her and how much I loved being her bitch. Grunts and moans and none of those things even sounded like they'd ever come from me, but they did. She smiled as she looked at me but there was no kindness in her eyes, no humour, no love, only lust. The last of my mind vanished and I lost the last bit of control I had.

I was a vessel filled with pleasure, bursting at the seams. The world disappeared and I must have closed my eyes again. In the far distance a familiar word was whispered into my skin and suddenly the most unbearable pain started shredding up my insides. My body convulsed, all my nerve endings were screaming. I was screaming so hard there was no air left to breathe. I knew this pain but it had never quite felt like this before. It was wild and ravenous it devoured me completely but it was layered. 

It took me a while to feel it because the pain was strong, overpowering but once I stopped fighting it it became easier to breathe. The pleasure I had just experienced was still there and once I found it there, just below the surface I couldn’t stop feeling it. It ate away at the agony and then it became impossible to inhale all over again. My mind started to spark and I got lost in wave after wave. The pain only adding to my climax, dragging it out much longer than I’d thought possible. When she lifted the curse the absence of the pain felt so good my whole orgasm started all over. 

I opened my eyes to find her still staring at me, wand at my throat. She used it to shed her clothes. She slowly retracted her hand, making me miss the intimacy of her inside of me. She released me from the chains and pushed me onto the bed, immediately laying down on top of me. 

“You’re mine, ” she whispered into my ear, her body wriggling against me. She pushed herself up so she straddled me, waved her wand and my lower left arm was on fire, blood dripping from it.

“What did you do?”  
“I decorated your arm a little,” she smiled and when I looked at my arm it said Hermione’s in bloody letters.   
“How?”  
“A new spell I learned. I’ve been reading a lot of new books, books I wasn’t interested in reading before.”  
“You’ve been reading about the Dark Arts?”  
“Yes. It’s all very educational.”

Nothing could have surprised me more, save from what just transpired between us. She was a light witch, her side was all about that and now all of a sudden she was reading up on the Dark Arts in her free time? I hadn’t told her to do that. I wasn’t even sure how I felt about it. Given the chance of one or more of my ex fellow deatheaters showing up one day I wasn’t opposed to her learning some proper magic to defend herself. But it wasn’t all good. I didn’t want her to get lost in the feeling of being powerful, to get addicted to it the way I had.

“Are you sure you want to go down that path?”  
“Please, Bella, don’t even think of telling me that I shouldn’t do exactly what you did. Don’t be a hypocrite.”  
“I wasn’t going to. I was going to offer you some assistance in learning what could be useful to you.”  
“You want to teach me?”  
“Yes if you’d like that.”  
“Brilliant,” she purred. “But right now I have other things on my mind.”

She waved her wand at my crotch and whispered a spell I was unfamiliar with. It had an immediate effect. Something grew between my legs and she smiled, wrapping her hand around my rapidly rising appendix. It felt amazing even though I was still in pain, or maybe because of it.   
“Apparently all sex spells are dark. How is that fair?,” she mock pouted, lifting her pelvis and lowered herself down onto my brand new and hopefully temporary appendage, letting out a guttural moan. Tight, hot velvety walls closed around a very sensitive part of me, it felt alien but entirely fantastic.   
“Oh god,” I uttered. She smiled down on me wickedly, one hand playing with my nipples, the other twirling her wand. She started rotating her hips, slowly at first building up a steady rhythm. Her body swaying on top of me, her small appetizing hand full dangling in front of my face seductively. I reached out to touch them and she bound my hands above my head with a quick, silent flick of her wand, my left arm hurting from the sudden movement. 

She rode me, her body bucking and shaking, sweat dripping off her, she was wild, picking up the pace more and more, driving me closer and closer to the edge. I could tell each time she got close cause she would flex her muscles, holding us both perfectly still to postpone the implosion only to start building it up all over again a few seconds later. 

“Are you ready?,” she brought out, driving up the tempo so hard she was gonna make me explode in seconds. Then, right before I fell off the cliff she pointed her wand at me again. 

“Crucio.”

This time I saw the curse fall from her lips before it wrecked through my body. This time I immediately felt the pleasure through the pain. I still lost all control over my body, something the vixen on top of me seemed to enjoy greatly. She shook and I could feel her clamping up around me, which in turn pushed me over the top. She collapsed on top of me, quickly lifting the curse before kissing me sweetly. 

“That was good,” she breathed into my mouth. She released my arms and I wrapped them around her clammy body. 

“How many times in your life have you cast the cruciatus curse?,” I asked as soon as my body had collected itself. I literally had never in a million years expected her to do that.   
“Before today never. How did I do?”  
“Hurt like a bitch. What made you think of using it like that?” I had never heard of anyone using that specific curse during sex, which by no means meant that no one ever did, just that no one talked about it.   
“You did,” she answered. “I wanted to know what it would feel like to hurt you the way you hurt me. I knew it would feel good to both of us.”  
“How?”  
“Because it felt sort of good when you did that to me.”  
I was stunned. 

“That is impossible.”  
“It’s true. It hurt more than anything ever has but it was more than agony. There were layers to the pain, it was hot. I felt connected to you.”  
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”  
“Because I thought I was crazy but who cares? Why should I judge myself for the things I like? There are plenty of other people to do that for me, let them. Life is too short to worry about what other people think.” She pushed herself up on her arms and met my eyes. 

“I have wasted so much of my life worrying about what other people thought of me. I used to care so much about that, but I don’t. Not anymore.”  
“Why do you think that is?,” I asked her but I was beginning to understand what was going on.   
“You didn’t turn out to be who I thought you were at all. Who they told me you were. Maybe the Dark Arts aren’t all that dark, but even if they are, why should l I limit my access to power? It’s about what you do with it, right? Power isn’t dark or light, it’s just power.”

I knew where that train of thought would lead. Where it had led me and Tom. It was a slippery slope, before you knew it you were imperioing people just to have your way. There was no way I could tell her that she shouldn’t dabble in something so alluring. I knew she wouldn’t listen to me, why should she?

“You’ve freed me,” she said, sounding nothing but content. I knew it was more than that. This was my own darkness inside of her. Our souls had merged and for me that meant light had found its way into my life. I was no longer shrouded in darkness because her light had infiltrated me, but the opposite was also true. That’s what I had felt rolling off her when she just had her way with me. Light is clean, happy, heroic optimism, things that I hadn’t felt in years and were for that reason very alluring to me. But the dark is like a drug all on its own, seductive, addictive and close to impossible to resist once you get a taste of it. 

She fell asleep on top of me and I soon followed suit. 

The two weeks we spent with Rose were curious. The amount of time we sat in front of the magical box watching the strangest things alone was amazingly alien to me. Then there were the conversations with Rose, the other muggles I met and my slowly developing understanding of muggle life and muggle culture. 

The cooking remained a point of interest to me as well as the different ways of transport. I couldn’t understand how muggles were able to build giant flying machines that were capable of carrying hundreds of passengers and their luggage, but were unable to to make a simple broomstick fly. There was no logic to it. 

Muggles had developed medicine. They cut out deceases, fixed broken bones and healed all kinds of things without using magic or any of the remedies I was familiar with. 

The more I learned about this world that had been right outside of my peripheral my entire life the more fascinated I became. This was Hermione’s world and the way she knew seemingly everything and navigated through it was awe inspiring. I knew I would be able to adjust to life in this world, any world, as long as I had her with me. 

Hermione was different. It wasn’t the kind of change that was big enough for her aunt to notice, it was subtle but undeniable. I witnessed it every night when I found myself at her mercy. She didn’t seem to have any, just an unquenchable hunger for my pleasure and my pain, especially the latter. It was surprising. She found spells she wanted to try out on me everyday. Spells that made me burn from the inside, like my guts were on fire, that drove the air from my lungs, spells that made blood seep out of my pores or peeled away my skin. She broke every bone in my body with a single wave of her wand and when she healed me it felt like an ocean of orgasmic waves. 

She tortured me almost the same way I had tortured so many, but she did it better. Besides the one she’d left on my arm she made sure o never leave me with any permanent scars and every time the pain became too much she added pleasure. She always repaid the debt she owed my body. She took it to a new level every night but she never gave me anything I didn’t deserve. I recognized the joy she took in wielding her new found power over me. She liked me powerless so I was, for her.

It was a play grounded in truth. She did have the power to destroy me after all. 

She obviously was a quick study, she could read a spell in the morning and use it on me by night time. It was impressive although she still had a lot to learn. If she was this much into feeling the power of causing pain, this early on, she would only want to know more, to expand her knowledge. I wanted to teach her more, to see her grow as a witch. I wanted to give her the power she obviously craved, even if I knew it wouldn't make her happy. 

She found us a place to live. A small farm in the middle of nowhere, no neighbours to speak of. I had no real clue about the value of muggle money but Hermione told me that the amount Cissy had transferred to her was enough to last us multiple lifetimes. 

I wondered why she had chosen a place to live that was so far from civilization but I was more than ok with it. 

The house we moved into was tiny compared to any of the mansions I’d lived in, but it was cozy. It was larger than Roses house and didn’t have blindingly white walls, which I was immensely grateful for. There was a large fireplace in the living room and Hermione had taken it upon herself to turn our bedroom into a rather gothic looking place.

I liked being alone with her all the time. I loved that I didn’t have to hide my fascination for muggle things. Hermione enjoyed cooking the muggle way whereas everything I whipped up was created with my wand. Another upside of living without muggles was the ability to wave my wand around as much as I wanted and Hermione didn’t need to hide the books she was reading, no not reading, devouring. 

As soon as we moved in I started teaching her everything I knew.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> O/ 
> 
> I struggled a lot with this chapter. I knew what I wanted to write, I just felt like I lacked the imagination to write it. In the end I'm fairly satisfied, hope you are too.

The things they teach at Hogwarts are basic at best. During my time at Tom’s side I was taught what real magic is all about. What it can do and how to properly control it. My eyes were opened as I came to realize that the most prestigious wizarding school in the western world is a joke. What they teach at Hogwarts is nothing but a crippled, badly mutilated form of what magic actually is. 

It’s a power that flows through everyone and everything, even muggles, but for some reason only some of us can ever dream of tapping into its source and manipulating it, that is to say, muggles can’t and magical folk and creatures can. 

Magic connects everything and to fully control it you need to be aware of that connection. You need to be aware of how the magic you are using influences yourself and everything around you. Practising magic is more than just the mechanics of waving your wand the right way and using a specific spell. It’s tapping into your power and taking however much you need of it to force a specific result. 

Once I became aware of this interconnectedness and my own magical aura I found it hard to imagine why these things, this kind of magic use isn’t more widely known. Why Hogwarts won’t teach their students more. The teachers at Hogwarts teach magic like they’re training monkeys. It’s unrefined. 

The answer is simple ofcourse. Teaching young children how to draw large quantities of power from the world around them so they can do with it as they please is irresponsible. To practice free form magic like that without any use for strict protocols or specific words, just by bending the magic to your will until it’s like an extension of you, is dangerous for the person using the magic but mostly for the world around them. It’s too much power for one person to wield and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That is why our society has put bounds on magic by teaching people to use it in a far less instinctive manner, and to be dependent on wands. 

The knowledge of how to use magic without these crutches is almost lost to the world and those who possess it are not willing to share. Not everyone should have that kind of power after all, like I said having power corrupts people. 

I used to think that was all a load of crap but looking back on my life it’s not hard to see how this power has changed me. It would be easy to completely blame Tom for corrupting me but although he opened this door for me, putting all the blame on him wouldn’t be fair. I was the one who wanted to know, wanted to be taught. I made my choice. At the time it felt like a whole new world opened up to me. Like there were no bounds to what I could accomplish. It had felt like freedom but somewhere down the line he had twisted all that around and I had found myself chained. 

I wasn’t eager to teach Hermione how to freeform. The way she’d been devouring Dark spell books, expanding her knowledge and always seemed hungry for more and even darker knowledge told me no good would come of it. I recognized that hunger and I knew that teaching her would inevitably lead to the complete loss of her innocence, or even her light completely. But I also knew that I had to teach her or one day she would find herself trying something horrible and run the risk of losing control of it. She was desperate to learn all the things she had once perceived as forbidden, so I decided to help her. 

I started with the basics. How to be aware of her own magic and that of the world and the creatures in it. I could tell she was unimpressed, the same way I had been many moons ago, so I explained. 

“If you cast a dangerous curse without any awareness of your own magical being, without knowing or understanding how everything, including yourself, is connected, the chances of things going not as planned are great. You can’t control what you don’t understand.”  
“That kind of makes sense,” she nodded.   
“Name one spell you would like to learn but are too afraid to lose control of.”  
“Fiendfyre,” her answer didn’t surprise me.   
“If you learn to feel the connection between your magic and the world I will teach you fiendfyre, it will not be difficult.”

“But how can I feel something that has always been there but that I’ve never been able to feel before?”  
“You need to find it inside of you first and then in the world around you.”  
“Are you telling me I need to mediate?,” she quirked an eyebrow.   
“What is that?”  
“It’s sitting very still in a stupid position and listening to your own breathing until you have no thoughts and feel at one with the world,” she sounded very sarcastic.  
“Let’s go outside.”  
“Please tell me there’s no chanting or ritual dancing whilst wearing nothing but body paint,” she carped as we made our way out into one of the grass fields surrounding our humble abode.   
“Body paint?”  
“That’s exactly what it sounds like, paint you put on your naked body.”  
“Curious, why would someone wish to paint their body?,” I asked while spreading out a fluffy blanked beneath the only tree in the vicinity. I sat down but Hermione remained standing.   
She shrugged.

“Sit down with your back against this tree and try to feel it.”  
She obediently sat down. I faced her and told her to close her eyes which earned me a sigh but she did it anyway.   
“I will try but I’ve never been any good at meditating. I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to feel.”  
“Your magic. It’s just below your skin, flowing through your veins. It’s like a tingle that gows and then fades to the background, like an ebb and flow.”

We sat there forever. It was March and luckily the weather was already very spring like. It was sunny and warm enough not to ear a coat outside. I sat and stared at her, willing her to feel her magic but she couldn’t. I wasn’t surprised that it seemed so difficult to her. She was great at learning things from books but she wasn’t very intuitive. She lived in her mind. I didn’t really know how I could make her feel it. 

“This isn’t working, is it?,” she asked after a few hours of silence.   
“I don’t know you are the one who is supposed to feel it, are you feeling anything?”  
She shook her head defeatedly. “I don’t understand. How am I supposed to feel this? I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to feel. I am trying, I really am,” she sounded desperate. 

The difference between me at her age and Hermione, was that she had actually immediately understood the importance of the basics I was failing miserably at teaching her. It had taken me a lot of time to learn because I found it boring and stupid but once I had understood why I needed to know this, I had learned fast. Hermione was eager to get to the good stuff but she knew she couldn’t skip any steps. She wanted power and didn’t mind the work. Which meant I was failing her. I had to find a better way. 

I moved closer to her and sought out the feather on her chest, she gasped when I touched her.

“What do you feel now?”  
“It feels good, pleasurable. I don’t want you to stop touching me.”  
“Mhm.” I moved my fingers gently over her mark, earning some heavy breathing. “Be more specific, what do you feel?”  
“Pleasure.”  
“Where do you feel it?”  
“Everywhere. Bella, please I want you, now.”  
“Try to focus, do you feel it moving?”  
She closed her eyes and bit her lip.  
“I know it feels good but there is more, just beneath the pleasure. It’s a current, it pulses, it tugs at your skin. Can you feel it?”  
She shook her head. “How can you feel anything else?,” she practically moaned. 

I took my hand of her chest and she snapped out of it.   
“That is just pleasure.”  
“It’s magic too you just need to feel it.”  
“How? If all I feel is..”  
“That’s what I need to figure out.” Using our mark obviously wasn’t working. 

I sat and thought about it for a while. I had to find a way to increase her magic so the sensation would be intensified, intense enough to make her feel it. But how? Then I realized that our magic was bound, which meant I could actually move most of my own magic over to her. 

I took her hand. For me, touching her in anyway at all gave me a diluted version of what I felt every time I touched our feather or she touched mine. Less overpowering, less distracting, more magic and less pleasure but still obvious. 

I started to focus on my power, on the current that never quite stopped flowing and began to direct all of it towards her, slowly but surely. I didn’t want to completely overwhelm her within two seconds. I wanted to build it up. I moved more and more of my magic into her, without letting go of it completely. I just sort of loaded it onto her half of what was now basically our magic. I could feel it leaving me but it never went out of my reach. Then I started to gather more power from the ground beneath our feet. That tasted totally different, more like pine cones. I added that to the power I was feeding her, more and more until her eyes flew open.   
“What is that? What am I feeling?”  
“That is magic, yours, mine and a bit from all around us.”  
She closed her eyes again.   
“I think I can feel you, yours I mean. It’s like a taste almost.”  
“Can you distinguish the earth?”  
“I think I smell pines. But why can’t I feel my own, is it because I am a mudblood?”  
I explained to her that it’s always difficult to feel your own because you’re so used to it . I assured her that her blood status had nothing to do with it. I told her to push the earth magic out which took her about thirty minutes to figure out, but once she got the hang of it it seemed easy to her. 

The rest of that first day I decided to focus on her drawing power from the world around her, which she found a lot easier to do than feel her own magic. She was quite good at it almost immediately and we didn’t return to the subject of her own magic until the next day. 

We hit the same impasse. She was rapidly mastering drawing power from anywhere around us and letting it go again. She told me she could feel my magic the entire time now and she could suck it right out of me when I let her. 

“Can everyone on the darkside just take one another’s magic?”  
“No. That would be something.”  
“Then why can I take your magic now?”  
“Because we’re bonded and in a way mine is yours.”  
“So we’re like an hourglass on its side?”  
I smiled because to me that was a really cute metaphor. “Yes, sorta.”  
“Then why can’t I feel mine?”  
“I don’t know.”  
“Maybe I can feel it if you take it away.”  
“Okay. Let’s try.”

I took her hand in mine and pulled her magic into me. It was very similar to my own but somehow more crisp. Light with a sharp edge, almost a minty flavour. Her power was so strong I wondered if in bonding with mine it had matured overnight. I felt like I was absolutely flowing over with the fullness of both our power.

“I don’t feel any different,” she sounded disappointed. 

I didn’t understand how she couldn’t. I had taken it all from her and she didn’t even feel it. I was starting to fear this might be a hopeless endeavour. It was great that she could feel the magic around her and even pull it into her. Usually that part was the hardest. But if she couldn’t feel her own connection to it all she would never have the kind of control I wanted her to have. 

Two more days passed, spent in the field doing exercises that yielded some results, although never the one I was after. It was astounding. She could draw my power into her even when I tried to stop her. She could take her own magic back from me without any help. I brought her into a field of cows and when I fed her the power I drew from one of the beasts she could identify which cow I had used, but no matter what I did she was still completely unaware of her own. It was maddening. 

I had her meditate some more. No results. I touched her mark but it only made her horny and I ended up fucking her against that tree. 

I was starting to doubt myself. Maybe it was different for her because she was a mudblood. Maybe she could control things in another way. Maybe our bond was making things incredibly difficult so I gave up. 

“Let’s do something different today.”  
“Are you giving up on me?”  
“No. We will try again tomorrow. Today let’s try something else.”  
“Like what?”  
“Something wandless.”  
“I’ve only been able to do any wandless magic at all ever since our first time together.”  
“That’s pretty amazing, most people never learn how to do it. Okay, look.”

I put the palms of my hands together and started focusing on all my power in the small space between my hands until sparks started flying. I started moulding those sparks into a ball slowly but surely by moving my fingers and adding more power it. After not too long there was a translucent shimmering ball between my hands, roughly the size of a bludger. 

Hermione looked at it like her jaw was about to hit the floor. 

“This ball seems pretty useless, a nice party trick I suppose, but if you’re without a wand and you need to defend yourself you can stretch it out like so.” I pulled my hands further apart until the ball transformed into a fine, glowing screen.   
“This will absorb almost any spell that’s thrown at it. It’s an effective shield but will only protect the parts that are behind it. You try.”

She laughed. “No way I can do that. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”  
“Yes you can.” I took both her hands, her palms facing one another.   
“You know how to pull magic into you and how to push it away, this is just like that. Just push your magic away through your palms.”  
“How can I do that when I cannot even..”  
“Try,” I interrupted her. 

She sighed and started trying, not immediately getting any results at all. After a few minutes she started to look a bit constipated which made me laugh.   
She looked up, slightly annoyed.   
“I’m trying okay. Don’t make fun of me.”  
“I’m not making fun of you. It’s supposed to flow. If you push this hard you might give yourself haemorrhoids. ” She pulled her hands from mine.   
“I can’t do it. I suck.”  
“No, you are actually amazing. I know you can do it.”

I put her hands back together and started guiding her power through her hands until it started to spark. She looked at her own hands in awe.  
“Now move your fingers like you’re moulding something and keep feeding it power.” I showed her how to move her hands and stopped manipulating her magic all together. She formed a small snitch.  
“More,” I encouraged. “You won’t run out, trust me.” I let go of her hands and the snitch turned orange sized before fizzling out. 

“You were doing that for me, weren’t you?”  
“I started out helping you but that was your snitch that turned into an orange. What did you feel?”  
“Just my body. My bloodflow.”  
“I don’t think you can feel your own bloodflow. I can’t.”  
“Sure you can. I can feel the blood flowing through my veins all the time.”  
I looked into her warm brown eyes. “What does it feel like?”  
“Sort of warm, like a glow. Sometimes it tingles and sometimes it flows really fast.”  
I raised my eyebrow. “And when you were just pushing your power out through your palms did I feel like you were pushing your blood out?”

She nodded her yes lighting up when she realized what her words meant and then blushed profusely.   
“I’m an idiot, aren’t I?”  
I smirked. “Usually you are very smart, my love.”  
“But I have always felt that even when I didn’t know magic was real.”  
“Because you have always had magic. Okay. Please try it on your own now.”  
It took her less than a minute to summon a ball as large as my own had been. 

I remembered trying to teach Draco this. It had been an uphill battle, even if the lad had been taught how to feel his magic ever since he was but a small child. Hermione was talented beyond him. Even if she had come from mud. If she ever let herself be corrupted by her hunger for power the world would tremble and fall to its knees. Hopefully I could prevent that from happening. 

In the next few days I taught her how to vast everything silently, how to completely de-materialise and in what ways she could use her power to manipulate all sorts of things in various ways. Normally something like dematerialization is difficult and risky to teach, but our magic being bonded the way it was made the risks a lot smaller. It made it possible for me to intervene in ways I normally would not be able to. 

She was a quick study, only needed half a word most of the time. 

While teaching her I noticed how much my own magic had changed. It was somehow more powerful but also lighter, like it flowed more easily. It was a change I hadn’t really noticed before. I asked her about it but the only difference she had noticed was her sudden ability to do wandless magic.

We didn’t discuss her rising hunger for power or her brand new taste for the Dark arts. I couldn’t imagine that she didn’t surprise herself with it but she was obviously unwilling to open that can of worms, just like I was. I watched her grow as she developed her freeform magical abilities and I felt proud.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello world, 
> 
> I'm still trucking on with this story and hopefully there's still some of you willing to read! So the next chapter.. I dunno what to say about it. I guess things are starting to derail somewhat.
> 
> Please read and review if you like, I know it would make my day :)

She woke me up at 7 am by kissing me all over my face. It was very cute but I’d never been a morning person so I groaned and turned my back to her.   
“Bella please wake up,” she whispered with her lips around the shell of my ear, her entire front pressed into my back.   
“Whatever it is it can wait an hour or two.”  
“You promised you would teach me today,” she insisted.   
“Today has only just started my love, plenty of time left.”  
“But I want to be taught now,” she whined, her hands finding those spots on my body that were extremely sensitive to her touch.  
“Please?” Her lips found my neck, nibbling casually, almost like she was totally unaware of the effect she was having on me. I rolled myself on top of her with a growl, pinning her wrists just above her head with one hand while running the fingers of my free hand over the colourful feather on her chest. I felt her grow soft and helpless beneath me, her breath hitched. 

“Do you want me to teach me or fuck you?,” I cooed.   
“Do I have to pick just one?,” she moaned.   
I nodded even if I felt my own desire rise to the surface. I let go off her wrists and took my fingers of her skin.   
“That’s not fair.”  
“How else will you learn?”  
“Learn what?”  
“Never to wake me before 9. I can’t reward that type of behaviour.”

She reached out her hand and traced the mark on my chest. I shivered, feeling all kinds of weak inside.   
“Are you sure you don’t want to do both?,” she purred.   
“Absolutely,” I breathed.   
She pouted. “How are you resisting that feeling? Is it less strong for you?”  
“I don’t think so.”

She kept running her fingertips over that specific part of my skin, making it really difficult to think at all. I had to concentrate hard on blocking out the sensation. She lifted her torso up a little and brought her lips to my chest, licking my mark. My toes curled but I managed to repress my response. 

“You’re lying,” she said. “It is different for you because you’re not a mudblood. That’s it, isn’t it?” I grabbed her by the chin and pulled her face up and away from my chest.   
“Why is it that every time you think something is wrong or different with you, you immediately assume it is because you are muggleborn?”  
“There has to be a reason everyone else seems to think me being a mudblood has some significance.”  
“Everyone else who? Potty and the Weasel? Do they treat you differently because of your heritage?”  
“No, nothing like that. It’s just that they get really upset when someone calls me a mudblood.”  
“As they should be.”  
“Why?”  
“Because it’s an insult.”

“It’s just a word and it’s true, my parents are muggles. I don’t blow up when someone calls Ron a ginger. It’s just a word. Maybe it hurts more because it’s true but for me, I don’t know, every time one of my friends gets mad because someone used the word mudblood to describe me it only feels like they fear that there’s more validity to it than just the obvious. If being a mudblood doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with me, or my magical abilities, if there’s no truth to any of the negative connotations, why do they care so much? ”  
I wrapped my hands around her face, listening to her words. I felt like I completely understood where she was coming from. She hadn’t grown up in a world that taught her the meaning of the word. For her it was really just a word, but she was forgetting one small detail. 

“There’s a war going on right now. There are tons of wizards who see you as a pest that needs to be exterminated. This war is fueled by hate and the word mudblood is a part of that, that’s why your friends respond so insulted on your behalf, not because they think something is wrong with you.”  
“But..”  
“No. You know you’re smarter than both of them. A better witch even if you’re not the boy who lived. You are proof that breeding means nothing.”  
“I work a lot harder than anyone. I think that’s the only reason everyone thinks I’m smarter.”  
I rolled my eyes at her. “You know that is not true.”  
She shrugged. 

“I know your magic. I’ve felt it. That is yours. It doesn’t come from studying. You are powerful. Blood has nothing to do with that, don’t ever think it has.” I kissed her to turn that adorable frown on her face upside down and before I knew it we got swept away by the call of our bodies. It was too easy to let myself be distracted by that magnetic forcefield between us if I wasn’t actively fighting against it. She didn’t have to pick after all, maybe it was better this way. It sure would be easier to focus on teaching he after these cravings had been temporarily tempered. 

I apparated us tp an excavation site that was sand for miles. There were no structures and even more importantly, no other people. I didn’t expect anything to go wrong but the smallest mistake could burn down our house and all the neighbouring houses. 

“You don’t believe I can control it,” she stated insecurely. It baffled me that no matter how often I told her that she was powerful she seemed to have such trouble believing me. I squeezed her hand.   
“Of course you can. It’s just no fun to spend hours fixing scorched trees and re-greening the grass.”  
“I didn’t think of that,” she smiled.

I held my wand and summoned the flames. It started out as just a small flame at the tip of my wand and a soft blowing sound that quickly ramped up into a a thundering billowing noise that was deafening. Hermione pressed herself up against my back, squeezing my hand so hard she nearly crushed my fingers. 

The small flame turned into a large fire that gathered right in front of me, growing larger and larger until it was a wall of flames. I could feel the heat against my skin and watched as the flames turned into snakes that hissed and slithered over one another in a disgusting looking fiery wall of flaming writhing serpent bodies, ever moving in place.

“That is beautiful,” the girl behind me said. “I thought it was supposed to be sentient. How come it’s just staying there?”  
“well. It is and it isn’t. if you just cast the spell and let it go it will run wild. But I didn’t do that. It’s tethered to me. Basically it’s just a manifestation of my own magic, as long as I stay focused on that connection it can only do what I want it to do. I can feel it, the same way I can always feel my magic, but stronger.”  
“But how do you not let it go?”  
“You keep your focus on it. It’s like what you did when you made that energy ball. You hold the connection, like when you gather magic, but it fights harder against you.”

I let my grip on the flames slacken a little bit before tightening it again. The snakes crawled up and then transformed into a huge fire breathing dragon. The beast took a few steps until we were completely surrounded by it. The sound was so loud I could barely hear Hermione when she spoke. 

“That’s brilliant.”  
It was so hot now that sweat started dripping from my forehead. I waved my wand and the dragon ran off, away from us, leaving a trail of melted sand and scorched insects in its wake. I snuffed it out before it got out of reach.

“It’s what I imagine having a tiger on a leash would be like. Your turn to try.”  
“I need a little more instruction. I don’t want to burn you to a crisp.”  
I grasped her wand hand.   
“We’ll do it together. Gather your power, cast the spell but try to hold on to it. Don’t let it go.”

I held her hand but I didn’t do anything. I let her cast it all by herself. A huge pile of writhing snakes started to build up around us, so close it felt like my skin was turning crispy. I felt her hold on to the flames tightly and the fire was fighting against her hold, trying to get closer.   
“Let go a little bit,” I said and immediately the snakes started slithering off in all directions. I snuffed them out in an instant. 

“I’m sorry, it’s hard to hold on.”  
“You’re alright. Now try again and this time hold it close and let it go, like a pulse. Like the way your power naturally flows.”

She did a lot better the second time. She summoned a large wall of snakes that was at a comfortable distance and held it under control a lot longer. When she let go more she quickly lost control and I had to put it out again. 

We stayed at the site for a couple of hours. Each time she tried she gained a little more control, until she managed to turn her flames into a giant, roaring lion. It was pretty impressive. 

We were both excited when she finally showed me that she was completely in control.   
“Now you know what to do if you ever find yourself surrounded. Just don’t ever use it in a small space.”

We apparated home and I sat down on the counter top while she made us dinner.   
“Why don’t you ever use your wand to cook?”  
“I find manual cooking more satisfying.”  
“Just looks like a lot more work.”  
“Instant gratification isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, besides you wouldn’t be watching me cook all the time if I cooked magically.”  
“So you like that.”  
She nodded.  
“You could consider doing it naked.”  
“I just think it’s cute that you’re so obsessed with muggle things. Who would have thought?”  
“I’m not obsessed, it’s all very new to me.”  
“How can you go all your life without knowing anything about the muggle world?”  
“The same way most muggles never know of the wizarding world. My short vacation in Azkaban didn’t help matters.”

She served two plates of fried rice and veggies, I got two beers from the fridge   
and we moved to the kitchen table.

We’d had a lot of discussions about meat. She claimed she wasn’t a vegetarian but she never prepared any meat herself. She did eat it whenever I made it, so we had agreed that whenever I felt like eating meat it was my turn to cook. She told me that the day she realized where meat came from, she’d refused to eat it for a month and she’d never really gotten over the idea of eating dead animals. 

Being a vegetarian was something I’d never even heard of before going to Hogwarts. It’s not a widespread thing in wizarding society. I found it to be one of Hermione’s more adorable muggle quirks but was too much of a carnivore to permanently not eat any meat myself. 

We ate in silence. 

As always she seemed gob-smacked by my lack of table manners but my behaviour didn’t seem to influence her own appetite. If anything she seemed fascinated by it. 

“Don’t they teach pureblood children how to use cutlery?,” she’d asked me the very first time we ever ate together.   
“Au contraire, ma chere,” I had answered. “They taught me how to speak, which words to use, and most importantly when not to speak. How to walk, how to sit, how to hold my head and my hands and my legs in any given situation. I was properly trained.” I hadn’t stopped stuffing my face while talking and suddenly I felt embarrassed. I swallowed before I continued. “I’m sorry I must look like a wild animal. I’ll mind my manners from now on.”  
“Oh no, it doesn’t bother me. It’s just curious. You have such…,” she hesitated. “You’re so obviously a lady, yet everything you do, how you act, it’s like you’re always trying to prove that you’re anything but a lady.”

I smiled at her. “Nothing gets past you, does it?”  
Her eyes softened and my heart melted.   
“I get it. It’s a trick you have used your entire life to make sure you don’t draw any unwanted attention to yourself. You’ve always been a girl in a man’s world. But it’s more. Everything you do, you do with such passion. It is truly amazing.”  
Nobody had ever talked about me like that. In two minutes she had understood what my sister would never be able to comprehend. She could see all of me and somehow managed to like what she saw. It made me wonder if her assessment of me was more true than my own. 

Of course it wasn’t. She was blinded by love even then, even if I didn’t know it at the time. 

Her eyes still held that softness when she looked at me. That tender caramel brown tugged at me. She was everything to me and every time her eyes found mine I felt my power slip through my fingers. She held the power to destroy me in the palm of her hand but I wasn’t scared. 

Today I had helped her to control a spell so difficult it had killed many who had tried their hand at casting it. She had mastered it in just a few hours. It had taken me much longer to master fiendfyre that way. It was easy to ascribe her ability to learn fast to the bond, to the fact that her magic had grown more powerful because it had merged with mine. But that wasn’t the only reason.

I knew one day, not too far from now, she would be more powerful than I was. I had always envied power in anyone else but I didn’t envy Hermione’s power. It made me proud, as if I could take any credit for it at all. 

“It took me two weeks of practising every day to control fiendfyre,” I told her once my plate was empty.   
“Most people never learn to control it,” she countered.   
“Fourteen days I practised for hours and it only took you six hours. Less if I’m completely honest.”  
“It’s all because of you and the power we share. You make me strong.”  
“You were always strong. I have nothing to do with that. You will be stronger than I am soon.”  
She laughed. “No way. How could I ever be more powerful than you? A daughter of the noble house of Black. I am only an annoying little know it all mud…”  
“Don’t say it please.”

“I will never be more than that. Well, a traitor maybe now that I’ve abandoned my friends. I can’t even say that I’m a light witch anymore, can I?”  
“You still want to defeat the Dark Lord, to help your friends even if they wouldn’t understand any of the power you crave?”  
“Don’t you think I could help them more now than ever before? Your lord still wants me dead so I guess that kind of makes me want to kill him.”  
“Only kind of? What do you think Harry would say about your new found love for dark spells or who you chose to run off with?”  
“Doesn’t he believe in free will and second chances?” She got out of her chair, pushed my plate to the side and sat down in the table in front of me, putting her feet down on my seat on either side of my legs. Both her hands found purchase in my hair. 

“I want to fight,” she whispered. “I want to fight now that I know I won’t be useless.”  
“You want to kill.”  
“What? No!”  
“If you fight now, you will kill, my love.”  
She swallowed loudly.   
“What does it feel like to kill someone?”  
“I can’t tell you. It’s different for everyone. I can tell you that you will either love it or hate it.”  
“What if I love it?”  
“You won’t,” I said confidently but I wasn’t really so sure. I could only hope that she wouldn’t. I didn’t want her to find out, to fight, to be corrupted in that way. I didn’t want her to end up like me, with countless deaths and torture sessions weighing her down. If only I knew how to prevent that from happening. 

“You don’t want me to fight. You think I’ll get killed, don’t you?”  
For someone as smart and observant as she was she sure had a knack for interpreting me completely wrong.  
“No, that’s not it. I told you. You are strong.”  
“Then why don’t you want me to fight?”  
I contemplated my answer carefully while staring into her eyes. My head subconsciously leaning into her soft caress as her fingers fondled my scalp. 

“Don’t you ever wonder how you managed to change me so fast? One day I’m happily torturing whoever, then I meet you and the next day I could no longer do it.”  
“I thought you stopped because you got into a fight with your lord.”  
“I betrayed my lord for you so fast and so easily, and then I couldn’t torture anymore. It made me sick.”  
“I guess the power of love has that effect. I think you stopped believing in your lord long before I came along,” she shrugged.   
“When did you first start reading about the Dark arts? Where did you even find those books?”

She blushed. “I came back after you left your house that first day and helped myself to some books in your library,” she confessed. “I don’t even know why but I knew he had called you and the wards were down and I just kept thinking about all the knowledge, all the books a witch like you must have. So I came back. I couldn’t resist. ”  
“Had you ever before felt drawn to the dark arts?”  
She shook her head.   
“So why do you think you were suddenly so interested?”  
“The world turned that day. You were not at all who I thought you were. The distinction between dark and light faded. I wanted to arm myself. I don’t understand why we are only taught such trivial magic at Hogwarts. At that point in time I knew I had to help Harry so I thought any knowledge would come in handy. Now that I know more I don’t understand how anyone can expect Harry to defeat the Dark Lord, with how little he knows. Before I read those books I didn’t even know what we were up against.”

It made sense when she put it like that. My own world had turned just as much that day.   
“Our souls merged, that process started that day.”  
“What are you saying?”  
“Your soul was innocent, white like sugar, mine black like coal, so when they merged my blackness started seeping into you. That’s why you changed, why I changed.”  
“So you are saying both our souls are grey now?”  
“Basically.”  
“That is such bullshit,” she laughed. “Your soul was never black, there was always good in you.”  
“Only what you put there.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hullo people who are hanging in there with me,
> 
> It's another chapter that is kind of .. erm.. skippable unles you're into this kinda smut I guess. If it's even that at all. I dunno I have some mixed feelings about this one, but it's what came out so I will share it with you regardless.
> 
> Please feel free to comment, 
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me those who have so far.

Hermione had changed in the time we’d been together. Not just inside, where her hunger for power was becoming so ravenous I feared it might devour her, but everything about her seemed to drift away from the girl she’d once been. Most noticeably the clothes she preferred to wear, and her sudden and mysterious addiction to black eyeliner. 

Suddenly every single piece of clothing she owned was black and she no longer hid her delectable body beneath bulky jumpers and baggy pants. She abandoned her love for colourful trainers and bought a few varieties of black leather ankle boots, flats, medium heels and one pair with heel so high I felt like a toddler when she wore them. 

She was always taller than I was but those heels made her practically tower over me. I liked those shoes the best. They were completely closed with slender heels, zippers on both sides and small silver studs in the back. She never wore them when we were out in the fields because the heels would only get stuck, but since she liked them and how tall they made her she often put them on inside. 

She was wearing them now. Those shoes were pressed up against my outer thighs as she sat in front of me on the table. We’d just finished our conversation about what I thought was happening to her. Her eyes lodged on to me and her left hand moved from my scalp down my cheekbones towards my mouth where she ran her thumb over my bottom lip. 

My skin prickled, the hairs on the back of my neck rising up. I could feel her mood shift before I saw the softness mostly disappear from her eyes. 

“There is no reason for you to hate yourself, Bella. Plenty of others to do that for you.”  
“I don’t care what other people think of me, you are all that matters.”  
“Is that true?”   
“Completely.”  
“Show me more of you.”

It took me less than a minute to pull my jumper up over my head, unbutton my pants, stand up, step out of them and discard my socks. I sat back down wearing nothing but my flimsy lace underwear.

I had unexpectedly taken a liking to wearing muggle clothing, even now that there was no more need to do so. The pants were comfortable and not having the hem of your dress dragging across the floors was really quite an advantage in my book. I did miss how I looked in my corset though, so I alternated between the two styles a lot.

“Why am I always the first one to find myself in a state of undress?”  
“You know why, because this is how I like you. Give me your arm.”  
I placed the upturned palm of my left hand in her lap and studied her face as she traced the letters she’d etched into my skin, making them bleed again. In spite of her learning the spell she’d used to permanently maim me from one of my books, I wasn’t familiar with it. The wound healed up in about a day each time, leaving nothing but clearly visible silvery scars, but the lightest of her touches was enough to make it ache and bleed all over again. 

The word mudblood on her arm was nowhere near that refined. I was glad it wasn’t. I was no longer the same woman who had carved that dumb slur into her arm. I regretted doing that to her, especially because I couldn’t undo it. I couldn’t stand to look at the scars, scars I’d made sure would never fade. Hermione herself seemed quite fond of the crude marks I’d left on her perfect skin. I often caught her running her fingers over it.

She brought her lips to my bleeding arm and kissed it, her tongue lapping at my flesh. I closed my eyes to fully focus on the soft wet sweetness of her tongue and the sharp bit of the wounds opening up again and again. I drifted off into that state of pleasurable peace for a while. 

I opened my eyes because she stopped and when I looked at her, her lips were coloured red, her thumb found its way back to my mouth and this time she pushed it inside together with her pointer and middle finger. I didn’t exactly know why she was doing such a strange thing, or why she ever did any of the things she liked doing to me, not even why she liked doing them, or why I let her. She jammed her fingers deeper, like she’s reaching fro my throat and I gag a few times, my eyes watering. She leaned in, bending my neck backwards, all the while staring at my face like she was looking for something. 

“You are so beautiful,” she told me and I felt her words sink into my skin, coating it like a fresh layer of paint. I always felt beautiful in her presence and with her it was never a burden. I considered how it was even possible to feel beautiful while being hooked like a fish but I didn’t have an answer. There was no answer because I obviously looked like a love sick idiot surrendering herself to the ridiculous whims of another. 

I imagined how dumb I must have looked and then I tried to see myself like this through Cissy’s eyes. Cissy who thought me a harlot for wearing lacy underwear. My shameless outfit would not earn her approval, she would surely have a lot to say about the bleeding wound on my arm and in my mind I could already hear her lecture on letting a mudblood take possession of my body. 

“I thought you only cared about what I thought of you?,” Hermione interrupted my thoughts.   
“I do,” I muttered, though it was difficult to produce sound at all.   
“Then why are you thinking of your sister right now?” She jerked her fingers back and I didn’t know if I was grateful or disappointed. I hadn’t felt her enter my mind, in fact I wasn’t even aware that she could use legilimency at all. Where had she picked that up? For how long had she been reading me?

“I can’t always control my thoughts. They go wherever they want to go.”  
“That’s what makes them so interesting. I know Cissy is important to you but this is no time to think of her.”  
“When did you learn legilimency? For how long have you been reading my mind?”  
“Long enough to know the kind of things you think about,” she smiled slyly.   
That answered exactly nothing.   
“Long enough to know that you lied.”  
“About what?”  
“You just told me that I’m the only one who matters to you but that isn’t true, is it? Your sister matters.”

“She’s my sister. She matters but what she thinks of me doesn’t, not really. She will have my back anyway.”  
“And you think I will turn from you the moment you do something I don’t like?”  
I shook my head. The bond we shared would prevent that from happening. Perhaps that made it even more important what she thought of me. I wanted he to want to choose me even if she had a choice, which meant I had to try to be the best version of me.   
“Don’t you know I want all of you? Good and bad, as long as it is real. You should know.”  
“You haven’t seen the worst and I never want you to.”  
“What if I want to see?”

There was no right answer. Nothing I had to say about that, nothing I could say. No way to convince her that she shouldn’t even want to see it, that it wasn’t really her who craved such things in the first place. 

“Don’t you want to give me what I want?”  
“I do, mostly.”  
“Why only mostly?”  
“I don’t think you know what you want.”  
“Oh I do.”

She flicked her wand at me and the scraps of fabric decorating my skin vanished while something tight and heavy wove itself around my neck. I reached up to touch it and discovered it was a wide leather band. There was a soft jingle and something cold against the skin between my breast. A silver chain appeared that started at the band around my neck and ended in her hand. I had often thought of myself as leashed but I had never before actually found myself literally on a leash. 

“How do you come up with this stuff?”  
“What kind of stuff?,” she feigned innocence.   
I grabbed the leash between us and pulled on it which made her jerk her end of it so hard the steel burned my palms as it was torn from my grasp and my body fell towards her, making me land on my knees on the stone kitchen floor.   
“Oh this? Well I have read a lot,” she smirked.   
“What kind of books taught you to leash your lover?”  
“Muggle books,” she giggled.  
“Muggles write books about such things?”  
“Muggles write of anything you can think of.”  
“Who would think of something so…” I tried to get up but the way she held the leash made it impossible.

“Wizarding folk are such prudes.”  
She wasn’t wrong about that. Whatever went on in people’s bedrooms was never talked about, let alone written down. All was well as long as it stayed behind closed doors. Of course men would brag occasionally but never explicitly. Women amongst themselves had no bragging rights. As with all things in my world, men were allowed more freedom. If Cissy ever laid eyes on any of the television shows and music clips I’d grown accustomed to she would blush hard enough to make her head explode. 

“There you go again, thinking about your sister.”  
She got up and I had no choice but to follow her into the den where she sat down on the couch. She stopped me when I wanted to take a seat next to her. One simple movement of her hand and my body veered right back up, not by magic or by force but by choice.   
“Where would you like me to sit then?”  
Without uttering a sound she pointed at he feet and I sat down on the floorboards.   
“Not like that, on your knees.”  
I got up and knelt down.   
“Part your knees and straighten your back.”  
I took the exact position she asked of me without hesitation. 

“What would your sister say if she saw you like this, Bella?”  
“The lecture would never end.”  
“I would love to see the look on her face.”  
“You know her disapproving sour puss look. She did find you in my bed before, remember?”  
“She dragged me out of it so violently I was sure she pulled out enough hair to leave a bald spot.”  
“Seeing me like this would enrage her even more. She wouldn’t understand.”  
“Do you understand?”

I stayed quiet because I didn’t. I couldn’t comprehend why my heart beat faster with every passing second, why my body was filled up with this pleasant tension while a knelt like a creature as lowly and subservient as an abused house elf. It made no sense. I had always been too proud for my own good. Too proud for a woman. I had refused to bow down to my father, my husband and even the Dark Lord. I had always valued my strength and my independence above all else. It had fuelled my hunger for power for years. But in this particular moment I didn’t care about any of that. 

I enjoyed the feeling of helplessness that came with willingly handing myself over to Hermione. I more than enjoyed it. My clit throbbed, pumping a steady flow of desire through my body, making me breathe heavier. I didn’t mind that she was dragging it out, made me sit there like an animal hitched to a post. Anticipation was apparently everything. 

She tugged on the leash until tension nipped at my neck, discomfort coursed through my body more than it already had been with my bare knees scraping the floorboards and the bones of my feet tucked beneath my thighs. 

None of it mattered when desire made my nipples pop and set my skin on fore. Every glance she cast in my direction felt like a caress. 

She poked at my inner thigh with the tip of her shoe, hard enough to make blue marks appear almost instantly. She tugged the chain while her foot sought out the centre of my desire, pressing the leather tip against it, locking me in place, making pleasure and pain shoot up in me forcefully enough to make me moan and gyrate my hips. 

“Look at you. You’re my bitch now, Bella.”

I shivered all over because of her words, because of the humiliating of the position I’d let her put me in and the absurd way she had finally decided to touch me. She kicked at my crotch almost gently in a steady rhythm, making me jolt in place. 

I was astounded by the effect she had on me, amazed at the way her mind worked and at her crude words, even if I had witnessed this side of her many times before. This time it was different. She was new and now it didn’t feel like a game. I felt myself growing smaller in front of her and I realised that if I let this continue, sooner or later this state I was in now would become permanent. 

If I kept handing myself over to her one day there would be nothing left to take back and I would be nothing. The thought didn’t bother me the way it should have. Al I felt was arousal. My mind was swimming in it. 

The tip of her boot found its way to my entrance and she pushed it into me like it was the most normal thing to do. My body accepted this new invasion, painful as it was. I stripped myself of the last shred of dignity and humped her foot like the bitch in heat she had reduced me to. I stared into her eyes, not wanting to hide anything from her, after all, what was the point of delivering myself to her if she didn’t witness it fully? 

I didn’t hold back and soon the pleasure ripping through me reached its peak. As soon as it did she waved her wand and happiness seeped into me. The pleasure was gone and it became very hard to hold onto the moment, to hold on to anything but this floating happiness that completely filled me up. 

I had never felt anything like it. It was nice, like my body was completely submerged in liquid golden sunshine that made the world such a hazy place it was hard to even notice it. Even through the haze I could still see her eyes that looked golden to me now, blurred by this woolly cloud that lay between me and everything else. I found it impossible to think of anything. My thoughts slipped through my mind like quick sand. I couldn’t tell if this state of happy oblivion lasted a minute or hours but when it finally ended Hermione was spread out nude on the kitchen table in front of me. Her body glistening, the scent of her arousal ripening the air. 

She smirked at me. 

“Welcome back,” she whispered hoarsely. “Now do that again.”  
I was still naked and leashed to her, other than that I had no clue what was going on. Of what I’d just done.   
“You used the imperius curse on me,” I concluded, disbelief thick in my voice. No one had ever successfully done that before. I had always remained concious of my actions, so much so in fact that I’d never completely been under anyone’s control. She had made me weak.   
“I had to try it sometime. Now there’s only one left,” she smiled.   
“I didn’t know you were collecting unforgivables. How long did you have me imperioed?”  
“A little over two hours I think.”

I ran my hands over her body, her response was great but I had lost my appetite. I undid the band around my neck and threw it on the ground. She sat up. 

“Are you mad at me?”  
“No just promise me you will not do it again.”  
“You are mad at me. Why?”  
“I am not mad. You took two hours away from me and I don’t like it. Just promise me you won’t do it again.”  
“You weren’t aware of anything I made you do? I really thought you would resist.” Her long legs folded around my behind and she drew me closer to her.   
“I don’t think you realize how much power you have over me.”  
“It’s just a game, Bella. I thought we both enjoyed our games.”

She didn’t see it. How could she? All her knowledge came from books, not experience. The game she was playing was just another variety of the one I had played countless times. It was different only because I had never laid any sort of sexual claims on any of my victims and none of them had been willing participants. Hermione’s game was more perverse and I was sure she went into it with a different intention. I didn’t even know if she had any goals in mind. The differences didn’t matter in the long run since I was convinced that in the end the result would be the same. I thought she knew exactly what she had been doing, all her actions seemed so determined, so utterly and completely directed at a singular goal. 

I suddenly saw that she didn’t have a goal. She wasn’t aware of the possible ramifications of her actions. Breathing became easier after that realisation. However intoxicating it was to imagine myself as her slave it was also something I feared. Something my body craved that my mind couldn’t quite get behind. I cradled her face in my hands and kissed her lips. 

“You must make up your mind, my love.”  
“About what?”  
“If you bend a wand often enough eventually it will reach its breaking point.”  
“Bella! Don’t be dramatic. I just enjoy playing with you a little.”  
“Just because you don’t realise what you’re doing doesn’t mean there will be no consequences.”  
Her eyes grew wide in shock. “You don’t do anything half heartedly, do you?”   
“No my love. I will give you what you ask of me so be very certain what it is you want before you open your mouth.”  
“If that is true there is no need to think about anything cause you’re already mine.”

She was right and she wasn’t. In her mind there was no distinction between me belonging to her and me being her slave. To me the difference was huge. The difference in our point of view was worrisome but I didn’t dwell on it. I twirled her hair around my fingers tightly, turned her around and draped her face down over the table, making her mine until she was nothing but raw desire. I enjoyed that just as much and it didn’t make me any less hers. 

Maybe I’d been wrong. The equilibrium between us was just like our magic. The sand in an hourglass. Forever moving as long as either of us flipped the container. She was stronger than I was until she wasn’t. The forces of light and dark pulled on both of us. Our desires were equal, though we both had different struggles with them. She faced her fears head on, being a Griffyndor. That’s why she was so eager to conquer all the knowledge that had been withheld from her, why she wanted me to be at her mercy when it came so much easier to her to be at mine.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh. Yes I know. Please read and review even if you hate it.
> 
> Thanks for your continuing supprt!

“I want to see you kill. I want to see you do what you used to do.”

It was evening. We’d had dinner after a day of duelling in the field and no we were watching another detective on the couch, her head in my lap, my hands playing with her hair. 

“I can’t go back in time. You changed me, besides there is no one to kill or torture.”  
“There is still a war going on,” she pouted stubbornly, raising her chin. “I still don’t want your side to win. There must be someone to snatch.”  
“We came here to get away, to avoid the risks of staying put and now you want to risk getting caught by capturing one of the Dark Lord’s hounds just for your amusement?”

She was silent for a long while but I knew better than to think she’d let it go. 

“I am no longer weak and useless. I can stand my ground.”  
“You want to fight, to support your friends when the Dark Lord finally confronts Potty.”  
“Yes and I want you to fight at my side. I need to practise.”  
My heart stopped. This was the one promise I could never make.   
“If people see you fighting at our side you will be pardoned. Especially if I tell them about our bond, and how much you have changed. They won’t sentence me to death by killing you.”

I very much doubted anyone would see it that way. I imagined my love running around a battlefield spouting unforgivables and I knew all anyone would be able to see was how I had changed her. Turning a Dark witch grey was a valued accomplishment, whereas turning a light witch grey was nothing but corruption. Hermione was turning out dark grey. She told herself she wanted to fight for her cause and needed the practice, but her initial request had been genuine.

“Now tell me the truth.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“I know you don’t want to abandon your friends but don’t pretend this is about practise. Tell me why you really want to see me kill. You have seen it before haven’t you? When Sirius died.”  
“How could you do that? How could you kill your own cousin in cold blood?”  
“Honestly the veil did most of the work, he just popped right through it.”  
“I’m serious.”  
“Never liked the pesky bugger. Such a cocky prick, ever since he was but a young lad. Always thought he was better than me and my sister. It was easy to show him how wrong he was and I don’t regret it.”  
“He seemed nice to me and Harry was very fond of him.”  
“Harry didn’t know him like I did. You still haven’t answered my question.”  
“I don’t know the answer. I just do.”  
“Don’t be ashamed.”

She hesitated, rolled onto her side, pulled up the hem of my top and pressed her face against the bare skin of my belly. 

“I’m afraid that I will stop loving you if I see you do horrible things,” she spoke tentatively and paused to kiss my stomach. “But I’m more scared that it will only make me love you more, that I will want you even more.”  
“How could you want me more after observing my cruelty first hand?”  
“I know I will.” Her teeth grazed my flesh.   
“There are things that I can’t give to you, no matter how much you think you desire them.”  
“Why not?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her again that I could never openly defy my cause, not even now that it was no longer my cause. I had told her before but the message never really got through, in her mind me changing sides would be the perfect solution to our conundrum. She didn’t want to be told no. 

She didn’t want to hear that I didn’t want to kill or torture again cause the weight of every thing I’d ever done was like a ton of bricks on my shoulders. If I hadn’t had her to distract me from my developing conscious and her body to cling to at night when the terror I’d spread around during my lifetime was lurking around the corners of my mind like an angry beast, ready to pounce and tear me to pieces, I would have already collapsed beneath the weight of my guilt. One day soon new guilt might be added to that pile. The guilt of corrupting the only light in my life. 

We fell silent. I had no intention of answering her question and she didn’t repeat it. I watched television, weaving my fingers through her hair absent mindedly, only losing my focus when her attention drifted towards my body. This physical desire was like clockwork. A timer that got reset after each time we’d given into it. Once the timer ran out the desire grew until it was all consuming. I liked waiting for it to become close to unbearable but Hermione didn’t have that kind of patience. 

“Who would you kill if you could kill anyone without repercussions?,” she asked me when I was on the verge of falling sleep. She tore me right out of my slumber.   
“What does it matter? There are always consequences.”  
“Just humour me. Who would you kill? Your lord?”  
“Pretty sure Potty is meant to kill him.”  
“Then who? Your husband?”  
“He means nothing to me. He will find himself at the wrong side of a killing curse soon enough.”  
“So there is no one you would want to kill?”  
“I didn’t say that.”  
“Then who?”

“A lot of his men. Greyback for instance. He is a vile beast. A lot of the snatchers. I’ve never bothered to learn any of their names, but I despise most of them. The one person at the top of my list is that slimy albino git my sister has the displeasure of calling her husband.”   
“Lucius Malfoy.”  
“Yes.”  
“What did he ever do to you? Or did he do something to Narcissa?”  
“My sister loves him, bless her heart.”  
“Then why do you hate him enough to want him dead?”  
“Mmm. Let’s see. He has no sense of humour, he basically usurped me. He’s a coward and so slimy that even if your side wins he’ll manipulate his was out of Azkaban, you’ll see. He annoys me. He’s brainwashed my nephew into being a creepy copy of himself. He cares way too much about being pretty but rue the person who ever dares to joke about that. He’s insulted me countless times and would be the first to dance on my grave the moment I pop my clogs. And most of all he’s totally undeserving of my sister’s love.”

She contemplated my answer for a while and I could almost hear the cogwheels in her mind turning.

“Are you jealous of him?”  
“Jealous of what? His dashing looks or his pea-sized brain?”  
“That your sister loves him more than she loves you.”  
“Do you think me in love with my sister?”  
“Maybe a little bit. I mean she is very beautiful.”  
“Mhm, and very much my sister. When did you have time to notice her beauty?”  
“Hard not to notice,” she murmured.

“She’s a real lady, unlike me. Very much a product of pureblood society. My mother would almost be proud of her.”  
“Almost?”  
“Well my sister still loves me and Andy. No amount of mudbloods in either of our beds could ever change that.”  
“And your mother?”  
“What about her? She’s been dead a long time.”  
“Were you close to her? Do you miss her?”  
“Nothing to miss. She couldn’t stand me and the feeling was mutual.”  
“What about your father?”  
“Let’s just say that in spite of me adhering to all of their backwards ideas I still managed to be an utter disappointment to both of my parents.”  
“Why?”  
“Well at first it was the fact that I didn’t bear my husband a child. Then they were very nonplussed with the fact that the Dark Lord basically nullified my marriage and after that I brought shame upon them by ending up in Azkaban. Oh and before any of that they were not too pleased with my choice of bed partners.”

She turned around to face me, her eyes impossibly dark in the dim light.  
“Who else have you been with?”  
“No one like you.”  
She pushed her forehead against mine.  
“Tell me. You know my entire sexual history.”  
“Only because I was there for all of it,” I chortled.   
“Please. I’m really curious.”  
“You don’t know any of them anyway.”  
“Just how long is this list?”  
“Oh a lot longer than yours, that’s for sure.”  
“Bella please! Why won’t you tell me? Have you been with him?”  
“Merlin no! Rod is the only man I have ever been with.”

I could tell just by looking at her that she was not very pleased to hear that and I had to admit that I liked her obvious jealousy.

“I’ve never thought of being with anyone before I met you. Well I thought about it but I never wanted to.”  
“Only because you never thought of girls.”  
“I tried thinking of them, didn’t work.”

I didn’t know what to tell her, all these women she wanted to know about were so long ago and of so little importance now that I didn’t even want to think about them. Even my memory of heartbreak had lost its bitter taste. Nothing in my past compared to her and in the end that’s all I decided to tell her. It wasn’t enough I discovered and for the first time I could feel her enter my mind. She was determined to find out everything and I didn’t hide. I opened my mind further, inviting her in. 

Her reaction to what she found was remarkable. She rolled herself on top of me and told me I was hers, making my name on her arm bleed with a gentle caress. 

Her possessive streak rivalled my own and I loved it. There was nothing in the world I wanted more than to be hers aside from her being mine. I wished I’d had the good sense to carve my name into her arm instead of that blooming word. I was destined to always be reminded of my own stupidity. 

I thought about putting my name on her skin all the time but it would have to wait. The war would first have to be over, the future had to be a little more secure. It would do her no good to go back to her old life with my name on her body, if there would even be a chance of either of us living on after the war. Cissy hadn’t gotten back in touch with me yet and my hopes of her finding any kind of solution were slim. Even if she found something I would not leave Hermione unless I absolutely had to. 

Time was running out. I didn’t know how His plans were coming along, not exactly but I did know the war wouldn’t last another two months. Hermione knew it too. Soon we would know if we both had to remain hidden for the rest of our lives or just me. Would the light side really assume Hermione had betrayed them if they ever saw us together? There was a chance they would. It was the reason she was so eager to fight for her side, one of the reasons at least. 

After one day of duelling with her I knew she would do well on the battlefield. She would be a real asset to her cause, if they could forgive her for using all the wrong spells. Which I knew they wouldn’t. I’d tried to tell her that but she couldn’t understand it. She was practical, thought the ends justified the means. I agreed but it didn’t matter what I thought, only what her side would think if they saw us both with the same feather in the same place. Eventually they would, if she were to fight. It couldn’t happen. Not with things they way they were, no matter how much she wanted to. 

She fell asleep on top of me, leaving me alone with my thoughts but not so alone they became unbearable. When I woke up I was alone. 

Hermione was not in bed with me and I knew she wasn’t in the house. She wasn’t anywhere ear the house. I could feel it in my stomach. I was restless, miserable and the mark on my chest burned. I had no idea where she’d run off to, no idea if she would ever return. I could only hope she would. Only hope that being away from her made her feel half as bad as it made me feel. 

I dragged my butt out of bed, pulled on one of my dresses and started the day with a glass of muggle scotch, which I vomited up as soon as I finished drinking it. I sat and waited for hours. Thinking she could have at least left me a note explaining her absence, wondering where she was. Worrying. Had someone taken her? Was she getting herself into trouble, or getting herself killed? I was annoyed beyond words, angry, frustrated but above all scared. Scared I would never see her again. The day crawled endlessly and after six hours of being alone the pain in my chest became quite literally unbearable.

I rolled up into the foetus position on the sofa, shaking like a bloody leaf, sweating dripping down my back and forehead. If she wasn’t coming back I hoped to die soon. After way too long of that I finally passed out.

“Bella? Bella what is wrong with you?”  
I opened my eyes and Hermione was looming over me. Her face full of worry. I felt better. The feather on my chest glowed with the light of a thousand lumos. The brunette above me stared at it in fascination  
“Why in the world is it shining so brightly?” She reached into my corset to touch it but the bright light didn’t fade in the slightest and the pleasure stemming from her caress was so great it bordered on pain. Her own mark merely glowed lightly, the same familiar glow that faded into nothing when I touched it.

“Where were you?” I sat up.  
“There were some things I needed to take care of.”  
“You mean you left me alone to go play with your little friends?”  
“I had to know how things are progressing. Time is running out.”  
“And why did that have to take eight bloody hours? Couldn’t you just send them an owl? Couldn’t you have left me a message? Something to explain your absence?”  
“I couldn’t send them an owl. Who knows who would have intercepted that.”  
“I thought you were never coming back.”  
“Bella!,” at least she sounded appropriately outraged at the mere suggestion.

“What was I supposed to think?”  
She lay down behind me and wrapped her arms around me.   
“I could never leave you. Being away from you is miserable.”

I urged her to explain herself but from what she told me it became clear that she hadn’t become ill in my absence, she had merely suffered an unrest, an internal nagging to come back to me. She could live without me but I clearly couldn’t live without her. It made sense, because the mark had only hurt me when it appeared. I was the one made to suffer most. I didn’t mind that idea. 

She silently caressed my hair and I felt my anger drain away. I was mostly relieved to have her back with me. She wouldn’t tell me what she had done, why she’d been gone so long and I could have looked into her mind to pry her secrets from it easily but I didn’t. I trusted her and I didn’t want to invade her privacy. 

I asked her why she hadn’t told me she had wanted to visit her friends and all she said about it was that she didn’t think I would have let her go. I thought on that for a while. I wouldn’t have let her go gladly, no. It would have made me mad for sure but she wasn’t my prisoner. I would have had no choice but to let her go. I could tell she didn’t believe me when I told her that. She still thought of me as someone so utterly selfish I was incapable of allowing her to make her own decisions. That stung a little but her being with me made it easy to forgive and forget. 

She kissed me like we hadn’t seen each other in months, it really felt that way. The world around us dissolved, the ache in my soul vanished like her lips had some mystical healing quality. For once I didn’t want this kiss to end and when her hand started pulling on my clothes I stopped her. 

“We have time,” I whispered into her mouth, my hands framing her face, observing her flushed cheeks and shimmering eyes.  
“I don’t think I can live without you,” she confessed. “I mean I already didn’t wan to but now I don’t think it’s even possible. I would just die, eventually. That’s what I felt today.”

Her words were bittersweet. I was relived that she felt this way, the same way I did but there’s a difference between someone telling you they feel like they will die without you and actually knowing they will. A nice metaphor can make for a harsh reality. I wished she did mean it metaphorically and at the same time it felt really good just because I knew it was true.

I planted soft kisses all over her face. I was overflowing with love. I moved my hands up under her top and caressed her skin gently for once. I wanted to touch her without urgency, gently, tenderly. I wanted to feel her differently, to touch and taste every part of her.

So I did. I slowly peeled away her clothes and brushed my lips over every inch of her skin I exposed. I got lost in the soft peachy curves of her body, her softness and her taste. So much so a bomb could have exploded next to me without me noticing. All I was aware of was her breathing, her heartbeat, the way weakness spread through the delectable body below me and my own desire. 

“Bella,” the girl beneath me sounded suddenly agitated, her body stiffened, her fingers jerking my hair quite painfully.  
I looked up from her body to meet her eyes.   
“What?”  
“We are not alone,” she whispered. 

I grunted and sat up, quite annoyed that my sister had chosen this exact moment to bother me, ready to scold her but when I looked up it wasn’t Narcissa standing in our den.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skip if you are sensitive or squeamish. Yes I know but .. SHIT happens, alright?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't hate me. I warned you. 
> 
> hides

“Well, well well. What have we here?,” the slick contemptuous voice of my albino brother in law drawled. A dirty looking man- child was standing next to him, the boy had eyes the size of saucers and his dark hair was tied back in a ponytail, in a perfect copy of Lucius’ hairdo.   
“Very romantic, Bellatrix. Quite out of character but downright touching. I wonder what the Dark lord would have to say about your remarkable taste in women. What do you think, Mecor?”  
“Fucking hot,” his braindead companion muttered.  
Lucy rolled his eyes at that. “That’s hardly the point, lad,” he scolded and slapped the back of the boy’s head. “This explains a lot, however unexpected.” His eyebrows raised smuggly and he stomped the foot of his cane on the floor. Merlin knew why he always carried that thing around, he was quite capable of slithering without it. 

He was so pleased with himself it made me nauseous but I was also scared. He only had to get to one of us to end us both, but dying wasn’t my worst fear at that moment. He was the man my sister loved and I knew I had to kill him, kill him or be killed. I couldn’t allow that to happen. 

I shifted as Hermione hid her nudity behind my back and silently summoned my wand, keeping my hand hidden in the folds of my skirt.  
“Oh please young mudblood, no need to be shy. We are all friends here, besides, nothing we haven’t seen already,” Lucius spoke again.   
“Go home. You know your wife won’t forgive you for killing little old me,” I sing songed, like I didn’t have a care in the world.   
“Oh, I’m not going to kill you, you are not getting off that easy.”  
“What do you care anyway?,” I casually asked. “I’m out of your shiny golden hair, isn’t that what you always wanted?”  
“I am so sick and tired of your annoying impudence!,” he roared and before I knew what happened his wand pointed at me and I was lifted off the couch and shoved brutally into the nearest wall, pain exploding through me, all air leaving my lungs as I collided with the rough bricks and fell to the floor. 

My head spun but luckily I had managed to hold onto my wand. I didn’t feel capable of rising to my feet, but I was able to sit up just in time to see the nude girl on the couch point her wand and utter the one unforgivable she had yet to try out.  
“Avada Kedavra,” her voice was soft but her intent was clear. The familiar green ray shot out of her pointed wand immediately and hit the young snatcher square in the chest. He died instantly which enraged Lucius. 

“No! You insolent, filthy mudblood bitch. Who the hell do you think you are?” He strode over to her brusquely and before she had time to react her wand flew out of her hand. Lucius shoved the end of his ridiculously baroque and completely superfluous walking stick against her throat, pinning her in place and taking her breath away. She squealed and struggled which made him press harder, then she only gargled. 

“You think you’re so smart, don’t you? Tell me dirty harlot, has dear old Bella betrayed our cause for your magical snatch? Well has she?” He took his cane away only to smash it against her clavicle, which made her grunt and cough when she found herself suddenly able to breathe again.

I sat and watched, waiting patiently for more of my strength to return. My head throbbed, my vision blurry and I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t pass out. All I knew was that I couldn’t stand up, I didn’t know if something had broken. I knew Lucius assumed I was incapacitated and I didn’t want to accidentally alert him to the fact I wasn’t by getting to my feet before I was certain I could manage the pain well enough to fight him. I tried to remember the last time I had been hurt in a situation like this and I couldn’t remember it. 

I’d come home with worse wounds, of that I was sure and I had never found myself unable to get back up after I’d been knocked down. Cissy had often wondered about my capacity to go on fighting while being badly injured. I seemed to have lost that capability. Had my love for Hermione turned me into a weakling already, or was it an age thing? I didn’t have time to think about it. I had to get up but I couldn’t. What was different? Why had I always been pretty much insensitive to injuries, but not now? What had changed? It was hard to think and from my current disposition I wasn’t sure I could even aim a killing curse correctly.

“Look at you, you’re such a weak pathetic excuse for a witch,” he lisped. “Your friends will be so disgusted when they learn what has become of you. The brightest witch of your age, don’t make me laugh. You’re nothing but the whore of a mad woman.”  
“Shut up you nasty bastard!,” Hermione spat back. She paid for her insolence the moment her mouth closed and his fist landed in her face. She howled. He stabbed her a couple times with his cane and she fell to the ground trying to ward him off.  
“Even a lunatic like Bella understands what beasts like you are good for,” her growled and grabbed her by the breasts so roughly she let out another pained sound. Even from where I was sitting I could see his knuckles turn white. 

Rage bubbled up inside me like a red hot knife, almost impossible to repress. Then I finally understood what was different this time. I never used to suppress my rage, quite the opposite in fact. I used to let myself be completely engulfed by my anger, so much so I never felt anything else, not during a fight. So I focused. 

I watched the man I hated most in the world lay his hands on my girl. He moved over her body like a hyena, dragging her back onto the couch. The molten lava of my anger churned inside me, rising up to the surface until it sat right below my skin and I could feel it blistering at the tip of my fingers, eager to erupt.

I didn’t feel any pain when I got up, my sight no longer blurred, my mind and vision both clear even if I was seeing red. This time Lucius was too caught up in his activities to even notice me closing in on him. I grabbed his lustrous ponytail as close to the root of his scalp as possible and dragged him off Hermione, kicking his wand out of his hand. 

“You’d better be careful where you put those grabby hands, pretty boy. I don’t remember giving you permission to touch what is mine,” I hissed, pressing my wand into the back of his neck.  
“We both know you can’t kill me,” he said smugly. “Your sister would never forgive you. She loves me you know? But, just between you and me, I’ve had better.”  
I sent the cruciatus curse his way. He fell to the ground with a loud thud and I watched him squirm like a pig in the mud. He didn’t scream but he did make these strange squeaking noises that made me giggle. I let it go on for quite a while before I lifted the curse and stunned him.

“You still don’t know your wife very well but I do. Sure she will be pissed for a little while. She’ll waste a few tears over you, but one day she will thank me for freeing her of you.”   
The useless weasel at my feet didn’t make a peep. Not that he could.  
“I can’t hear you!” I couldn’t help kicking him in the crotch, which inspired me to use my high heeled dragon leather boots in a way I’d not once considered before.   
“What’s the matter Lucy? Cat caught your tongue? Who’s helpless and weak now?,” I taunted. 

I jumped and landed on his abdomen, where I jumped up and down a few more times, not even looking at my feet, instead I stared into his eyes. There was pain in them, which thrilled me. 

“Not so tough now, are you Lucy? How does it feel to be at the mercy of madwoman? Spoiler alert, I have none.” I started jumping like a hyperactive toddler on a bouncy castle, drinking in the pained gleam in his eyes. He deserved this and more. I squatted down and waved the top part of his outfit off, not because I ached to see his undoubtedly chiselled abs but because I wanted to see the damage I was doing to him. I purred contently when I saw the red and blue scrapes and bruises I’d left on him. I flicked my wand and a variety of cuts slashed him open, the deep red forming a nice contrast with his lily white skin. 

Looking at him I wondered if Narcissa might be a raging lesbian underneath that perfect housewife exterior. She had chosen the most effeminate mate after all. 

I grabbed his chin while I was still squatting down.   
“Do you want old Bella to make you even more pwetty little Lucy?,” I cooed, using his chin to make his head nod at me.   
“Oh alwright then. This will only hurt a lot.”  
I waved my wand wildly, slicing open more and more of his torso until it was covered in cuts and bleeding profusely. I rose up and started jumping once more. It was more difficult now that his skin was slick with blood and my heels got stuck in various of the wounds on his chest. Each time I slipped up I landed on his chest which didn’t really hurt me at all so I had no problem with it. 

I stopped jumping and walked over his torso like I was walking a tightrope, one foot in front of the other, my arms stretched out to either side of me, until I reached his neck. I put one foot down on his adam’s apple, gently pressing down, blocking his airway. I was tempted to stomp down but that would kill him too fast for my liking. I wanted to hear him beg me to kill him, if such a thing was possible. To hear him I would have to undo his stun but I couldn’t run the risk of him using his Dark Mark to call in reinforcements. I got off his neck and put one foot on his cheek, using my heel to poke a hole in his pretty face until I could see the macabre grin of his skull without him even opening his mouth.

After that I completely let go. I totally forgot who I had become and remembered who I had been. I summoned my enchanted dagger and suspended his body in front of me. I kicked off my boots. I didn’t mind being midget me while torturing someone. In fact being hurt so badly by someone a little over half your size was more humiliating and I liked that. I always kind of enjoyed the feeling of warm blood on my feet as well.

I got caught up in this familiar bubble of putting someone through agony and the world around me disappeared. There was something so addictive to driving a person to the brink of death in the most painful way possible. I loved the sounds, the smells, the way I could transform a body, and how it made me feel all powerful, like I was completely in charge in every part of my life. A clean break hadn’t cured my addiction. I was still the same monster I had always been and I loved being her. 

Lucius was not my perfect victim by any stretch of the imagination. His body disgusted me but that didn’t stop me from stripping him bare and paying attention to every part of it. In situations like this there was no room for personal preferences. I replaced the stun with local binds so I could drink in his screams and really fully enjoy his agony. It had been a while since I had enjoyed this so much, even in the months before Hermione came along I hadn’t really enjoyed my addiction the way I did now. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I’d actively hated Lucy for years or maybe I had tried so hard to be good in these past months that I had missed this side of myself. 

I had started out fast but slowed down considerably, really dragging it out as long as I possibly could, taunting, mocking and cackling. I turned my wand into a whip and whipped the skin right of his back. I wrapped my small hands around his delicate aristocratic neck and squeezed until he could taste the sweet release of death and then I waved my wand and healed him back to mint condition. Once again a blank canvas, save for the few marks my enchanted dagger had left behind. 

“You didn’t think I would let you off that easy, did you Lucy?,” I snarled.   
“Please Bellatrix, just kill me.”  
“Oh I will, eventually.”

I went on and on, patching him up two more times. Ruining his body over and over until I decided I’d had enough and I finally allowed him to die. I slit his throat, blood spattering all over my face, hair and dress. Lucius’ face was practically unrecognisable, blood colouring his skin and hair a very light pink. I released the magical bonds and his body fell to the ground.

My body hummed with pleasure, sweat dripping down my back and face, my heart beating down my throat, magic zooming just beneath my skin, making the hairs at the back of my neck rise up.

“Bella,” a small voice came from behind me, so close I could feel the expelled warm air hitting my shoulder, reminding me of Hermione’s existence, not that I’d really forgotten.   
I turned around and was faced with the deep golden brown of her irises. She had put her top back on, but not much else. She hesitated but the look in her eyes was pure fire. A jolt of unadulterated lust shot through me. I dug my hand in those soft curls and jerked her head towards me, kissing her, biting her, wanting to devour her. 

When I broke the kiss I noticed my bloodstained face had left red smudges on her lips and around her cheeks, I tried to wipe them off, but my hands weren’t any cleaner. It almost looked like she was the one bleeding and for some reason that turned me on even more. I took a few steps back and she moved with me like there was a magnetic force pulling on her. 

She tried kissing me and I pushed her off me, she stumbled a few steps back and I slapped her. The sharp sounds of my hand colliding with her face and and Hermione’s surprised gasp ripping through the silence. I liked those sounds so I slapped her face to the other side and back again, until I saw clear hand prints forming, the blood beneath her skin rising up to meet the smudges on the outside of her face. 

“Bella,” she whispered uncertainly, taking another step in my direction. This time I shoved her hard, making her tumble to the ground. She landed in the largest of the red puddles on the floor and let out a disapproving sound, slipping in her haste to get back to her feet and away from the fluid that was now staining her skin and top. I watched her, and when she got close to getting back to her feet I kicked her back to her knees, this time she fell face down in Lucius’ remains. 

I dove on top of her, my weight pushing her even further down, completely ignoring her disgruntled and disgusted sounds. 

I crouched over her and took out my dagger. 

“Bella, please what are you doing?,” her voice shook and it was higher than usual. She was my ideal victim. I loved the fear in her eyes and the way her body froze up beneath me. I straddled her in a perfect imitation of how I had the first time we’d ever been alone. I sliced her top off which made her shiver and I tingled all over. I twirled my bloodied blade between my fingers, moving it closer and closer to her face, carefully pressing it against her jawline and then slowly guiding it down until it rested against her throat. Her breath hitched and I could see her heart beating. 

The tips of my fingers languidly glided down the smooth skin of her side until they didn’t leave any new red traces. I dipped my digits into the crimson pool on the floor and drew patterns on the soft flesh of her torso.

“It would be so easy and so delicious to make you bleed out,” I said gently. It was true. A part of me screamed at me to end all of this right now, even if it would kill me in the process. I was sure it would be worth it. It would be a solution of sorts. But when I met her eyes there was sheer panic in them, tears were rolling down her cheeks and something inside of me grew soft. I threw the dagger away and took over her mouth with mine, holding on to her face while my tongue chased hers. The air between us filled up with electricity and her hips rocked against me. 

“Please,” she begged. 

I grabbed her by the hair once again and positioned her on hands and knees while I got to my own knees and sunk my teeth into the back of her neck. The tangy metallic taste filled my mouth as I sucked at the skin I’d just opened. Her shallow breathing reverberated against my lips as well as her heartbeat. I noticed my own heart was beating just as fervently and an ocean was forming between my thighs. 

My hands automatically located the fine peaks of her breasts and she let out a small moan when I used them to pull her body tighter against me. I clawed at them while locating different spots at the back of her neck to sink my teeth in. I didn’t bite hard enough to break the skin a second time and her moans became more frequent, which made my own core pulse. I ground my pelvis against her ass which honestly didn’t do a whole lot more than make me more randy. 

I began to bite my way down from the back of her neck, each time my teeth so much as grazed her skin her body shocked and a beautiful sound fell from her lips, she writhed against me and the fingers of my right hand let go of her breast and travelled down slowly and gently, only occasionally scratching her. 

The soft pad of my thumb found its home at the small bundle of nerves nestled between her folds, caressing it gently, eliciting the most enticing, lascivious responses. When I finally reached into the overwhelming wetness between her thighs, her slick hot heat seemed to suck on my fingers and she let out an unmistakable sound rather quickly. 

I got fed up with not being able to see her face and pulled my fingers back. I flipped her over, my eyes gliding from her long shapely legs that I positioned around my waist to the small puffy mound of flesh between her thighs that looked like a slippery, ripe piece of fruit, and over the smooth peach coloured landscape of valleys and hills before me until they captured her clouded gaze. 

I held her stare as I folded my fingers together, tucking my thumb in.   
Her eyes grew wider but she didn’t tell me to stop so I slowly started to work all of my   
hand into her, slowly, twisting around to create the space I needed. The hardest part was pushing past the third knuckle. Once I’d pushed past that point it got easier. She was like a hot, wet, trembling, glove around my hand, she opened further to me than she ever had before. She let out a deep guttural growl. 

“Oh god,” she muttered.  
“Oh come on, I have very small hands.”  
“Right.”

I didn't move my hand immediately. I just bent down and bit her bum. She moved whid made her to move around my hand. Judging by the howl coming from her she liked that and it gave me some more room to act. My movements were slow and small to start out with. Even though I did have small hands I couldn’t imagine what it would be like if our roles were reversed, so I was gentle until the raw animalistic sounds coming from her convinced me she could take a little more. 

I fucked her till neither of us could go on. Hearing her scream my name in pleasure was even better than hearing Lucius beg me to end his suffering. But once the blind rage and bloodlust had seeped from my body I was cast into a world of pain from all my untreated injuries and my mind cleared. 

I looked at the beautiful girl in front of me and really saw her for the first time in hours. She was not only covered in Lucius’ blood but also actually partially on top of him. My heart stopped.


	16. Chapter 16

“Oh god,” I uttered staring at the completely ruined body of my brother in law. Cissy would kill me. I staggered to my feet and Hermione got up and steadied me.   
“You had no choice, you had to kill him.” She kissed my neck. “You are so hot,” she husked her eyes showed a whole new level of adoration.  
“I didn’t have to do it like this.” But I knew for me there had been no other way. I couldn’t do anything half. I couldn’t actually kill anyone without feeling that rage, or without giving into it. My anger was my superpower, it made me capable of things I couldn’t usually do, not only mentally but also physically. .

“You liked it, you enjoyed your very first killing curse and you enjoyed watching me do all that to my sister’s husband.”  
“So what if I did? I know you liked doing it, it turned you on, that much was obvious.”  
“Was it?”  
“Absolutely. You didn’t hump him, but for a minute there I thought you were going to.”  
“No way. Do you really think torturing people turns me on? Who do you think I am? It was you, it’s always you. You turn me on.” I knew my argument was weak as soon as I uttered it but I had to say something.   
“Bella,” she took my hands and I looked at the blood on her fingers. I had put it there so I broke our connection because it was too symbolic. There were two dead bodies in our livingroom, one of whom she’d killed, but instead of feeling guilty about what she’d done she’d only felt horny. I understood that feeling possibly better than anyone else could but it was wrong. This wasn’t her, this was all my fault, my influence. I took a few steps back.   
“I know who you are Bella, I’ve known it for a long time and it didn’t keep me away from you.”

My head throbbed. The girl in front of me looked every bit as innocent as the first time I’d laid eyes on her, but she wasn’t. 

“Why do I feel like you’re judging me?”  
“I’m not, love.”  
“You are! Why else are you putting all this distance between us?”  
“Not so long ago all of this would have sickened you. Doesn’t it bother you how much you’ve changed?”  
“You have changed too, does that bother you?”

The only thing that bothered me was how much I hadn’t changed. How easy it had been to slip back into my old self. It bothered me that I felt no real regret apart from regretting I’d let it come to Hermione killing a snatcher. I deeply regretted that I had to find a way to tell my sister what I had done, I knew I had to tell her. 

“I just don’t want you to get lost the way I did. They way I just did.”  
“What are you talking about?”  
“Just be careful with the Dark Arts, with your hunger for power it can eat you alive. It can make you forget who you are and turn you into something much darker. I don’t want you to get lost.”  
“You’re a bloody hypocrite!,” she huffed. “You can’t tell me not to do exactly what you did!”  
Anger made that pretty gold flecked brown velvet of her eyes sparkle. I sighed and reached out to touch her. She took a step back.   
“All I’m asking you is to be careful. To take a step back and think. Think about what this change in you means and if it’s really what you want for yourself.”  
“So what if I want to be a little more like you? I happen to think you are amazing,” she spat out defiantly. 

“Hermione, I don’t even want to be like me. I am not a good person, but you are.”  
“Says who? I was always just that annoying know it all. My own best friends only barely tolerated me. I was a goody two shoes, yes. I couldn’t stand injustice and I thought I knew everything when in reality I knew nothing. I don’t want to go back to being wrong about so many things. You have set me free, please don’t take it back now.”

Her words reminded me so much of the words I had once spoken to Tom. I had thanked him for opening my eyes and setting me free. Just before I lost myself and was thrown into Azkaban. My head spun. History was literally repeating itself. Hermione was losing grip on the girl she’d once been. She was transforming in front of my very eyes and I didn’t know how to stop it, how to help her keep a hold on the goodness inside. I could see clearly what I had only suspected before. She was falling fast and soon there would be nothing left. I hadn’t thought twice about it, but to her, letting herself be brought to climax on top of a dead body must at one point in her life, a point not very long ago, have been shocking and repulsive. The girl standing in front of me had barely mentioned it. She didn’t care, and she’d known all along that she wouldn’t.

I remembered the conversation we’d had only a day ago. What an amazing coincidence that the one guy I had admitted to wanting to kill had showed up in our living room. No one even knew where we were. My stomach turned. 

“You lead him here,” I accused.   
I expected her to deny it, to tell me it was all just a freak coincidence.   
She stared at me, chewing her bottom lip.  
“Why on earth would you risk everything by bringing him here? You could have been killed or handed over to the Dark Lord! Are you crazy???!”  
She took a step towards me and caressed my hair.   
“I knew you wouldn’t let that happen,” she said smoothly. Her hand was remarkably soothing and I felt myself relax. “I knew you wouldn’t let him hurt me and you didn’t. You were brilliant, like I knew you would be.”

She gave me one of those looks that turned me into a puddle and I couldn’t argue with her. Trying to talk sense into her obviously was a pointless excercise that would only lead to a discussion I was too tired to have. 

I sighed and cast a bunch of scourgifies to get rid of all the blood and after that I started to repair most of the damage I’d done to Lucius. If only I could bring him back to life.   
“Why on earth are you doing that?”  
“I can’t take him back to Narcissa looking like something that came out of the meat shredder.”  
“You can’t take him back to your sister. She will never forgive you.”  
“She will in time.”  
“How can she? She loves him. Would you forgive her if she did that to me?”  
“It’s not the same. She will forgive me eventually but it doesn’t matter if she doesn’t. She has the right to know what happened to her husband.”  
“No!”  
“It will be fine.”

I grabbed Lucius cold wrist touched the snatcher’s leg and disapparated. It was two am and when I landed in Malfoy Manor my sister wasn’t there and I was relieved. Leaving both bodies in the parlour I apparated to Narcissa’s bedroom. I nearly collapsed when I landed. Pain sprouting up all through my body, my head was swimming and I felt so nauseous I thought I might throw up. On top of all that Hermione’s absence already started to make itself clear to me physically. 

“What are you doing here?,” Cissy jumped out of bed as soon as she saw me. A vision of perfect pureblood upbringing in her ankle long green silk nightgown, that was sexy but not at all trashy. She took in my dishevelled state with visible distaste. I had cleaned the blood of Hermione, Lucius and my kitchen floor but forgotten to cleanse my own face and dress. 

“Something happened and I don’t know how to tell you.”  
“Who has died?,” she asked and when she saw my expression her face turned porcelain white. She dug into my mind greedily, looking for answer and I felt a slight panic. I had anticipated telling her some polished version of the events of that night but her invasion blew that plan right out of the water. She was flipping through my memories and I found myself reliving all the events of that night in minute detail. 

I didn’t push her out. There were only two people in the world allowed to visit my mind and they got a full backstage pass, even if what they found was bound to hurt them. I didn’t believe in coddling. 

“What have you done?!,” she screeched, sounding like a harpy, her fist beating down my already weakened body with such viciousness that I landed on her luxurious bedroom carpet. She gave me no chance to get back up. Her body shook with the rage that rained down in me in the form of slaps, punches and kicks. I wasn’t sure she would stop before I was as dead as her beloved husband. I didn’t fight her, wouldn’t have even if I’d had the strength to do so. I didn’t ask her to stop I just accepted her punishment. She had every right to be mad, every right to beat me to a pulp and to never forgive me. Lucius was a jackass, but he had been her jackass and I had taken him away from her. 

I’d never before seen my sister this seething. She was out of control. She reminded me of our mother more than ever. Although mother’s rage had never gone beyond violent outbursts of verbal abuse. All women in our family, including me and Andy were blessed with that infamous explosive rage. Narcissa never let it out, she excelled at keeping every bit of her personality under control at all cost, this was the first time I had absolutely no doubt that we were related. 

“Why did you have to take it so far Bellatrix? A simple killing curse could have done the trick! How could you! You know how much he meant to me! How could you!,” she kept screaming at me and when she eventually calmed down a little she finally stopped hitting me. She stared at me for what felt like an eternity although it was hard to keep track of time, hard to stay concious at all beneath her icy glare. 

“What am I supposed to tell Draco, did you think about that? Did you think about your nephew at all?,” her voice turned the air around us into icicles.   
“You can tell… him… whatever you want,” I croaked, each word costing more and more effort.  
“Of course you didn’t think about that! You can only think about yourself and that filthy mudblood. She’s all you care about, you couldn’t care less about me or my son!”  
“I… I… I’m sorry.”  
“I’m sure you are! You tell him! You tell him that you let out your inner demon on his father! You tell him that you tore him to shreds! Tell him how sorry you are, I don’t believe you. Merlin, I can’t even look at you now, get out of my house!”

She stepped over me, leaving me alone and a few seconds later a heart wrenching scream echoed through the house. Maybe she would never forgive me, even if she would it was going to take years and years. I lifted my wand hand to apparate home but nothing happened, I just didn’t have any strength left. I cursed under my breath and then everything went black.

When Cissy woke me up the sun was already pouring In through the room from behind her bedroom curtains. She looked ghastly, her skin was grey, deep purple bags adorning her red rimmed bloodshot eyes, almost all of her braid had come undone, messy golden strands poking out in every direction. She was dressed in a black smock that made her look like a queen. 

I felt terrible, emptying the contents of my stomach into her expensive carpet as soon as she shook me awake, only just missing the tips of her shoes. The mark on my chest burned but the separation from Hermione wasn’t the only reason I felt like I was floating on the brink of death. 

Narcissa didn’t speak a word. She called her favourite house elf and instructed the creature to bring her some things. When it came back she fed me potion after potion before waving her wand at me for a long period of time. She was silently and dutifully healing me and I relaxed somewhat. If she didn’t think she could eventually forgive me she wouldn’t have bothered with healing me. 

“Why are you not feeling any better?,” she asked after a time.   
“It’s the bond.”  
“But you haven’t been separated that long, have you? Andromeda doesn’t start to get ill until after a week of separation.”  
“So far it has become unbearable after about six hours and it seems to be getting worse sooner.”  
“For both of you?”  
“I’m not sure, I think it’s worse for me. What are you doing?”  
She reached into my corset and touched my feather, I gasped in pain.   
“It’s turned completely black and it’s bleeding. Has it done that before?”  
I tried to look down at my own chest, which I immediately paid for with bolts of pain flashing through my head.   
“I have never seen Andy’s mark do that, not even after a week. What exactly happened last time after six hours?”  
“Not sure I didn’t think to check and I passed out.”

She stared at me as she squatted beside me, tapping her index finger against that little dimple right above where her lips met, worry plastered all over her face.   
“Maybe she died. That would only be fair, wouldn’t it?,” I asked. The thought alone was enough to make me cry but I didn’t let it show. It wasn’t my time to be emotional.  
“You’re my sister first and foremost. I love you. I haven’t forgiven you, yet, but I know who you need to be to do what you do. I will keep you alive if it’s the last thing I do, your survival is more important now than it ever has been,” there was ice in her voice when she declared her sisterly love for me with a simplicity that astounded me. 

“I don’t deserve you.”  
“You really don’t,” she agreed quietly, grabbing my hand and apparating both of us to the home I shared with Hermione. The girl jumped up and bounded towards me as soon as we appeared.   
“Oh thank god Bella! I thought you were dead!,” she whispered into my hair as she wrapped me up in an embrace tight enough to break my bones. I instantly felt better. She let go of me as soon as she noticed Narcissa. She jumped back and froze, the glow of her feather shone bright through the top she wore but but it was nothing compared to the light of a dozen suns that came from my chest, dousing the entire room in a blindingly white light.

Cissy blinked looking exactly as fascinated as the brunette next to her.   
“Curious,” she mumbled and then proceeded to grill Hermione about how she had felt in my absence. Had her chest starting hurting, did she vomit at all, had her mark turned black or started bleeding? The answers to all of my sisters questions were a resounding no. Hermione hadn’t been ill at all, she had only felt that miserable unrest that drove her to reunite with me as soon as possible. She hadn’t dared apparate to Malfoy Manor, too afraid of Cissy’s wrath. 

Narcissa seemed all but over the death of her husband already. She didn’t speak of what had transpired, not a word and luckily Hermione was too scared to rub her the wrong way to even ask about it. We had tea and Narcissa shared her concerns that the intensity of the bond between me and Hermione might complicate her work on the potion, which lead to at least a 100 questions from the the girl, that she patiently answered before instructing my love to not leave me by myself for more than a two three hours. Then she poofed, without so much as a goodbye, stunning Hermione with her rudeness. 

“I did just kill the father of her offspring,” I explained.   
“I assumed you didn’t tell her that. Did she love him at all?”  
“Oh she exploded with quite a bang, I thought she was going to kill me,” I assured her.  
“She got over it fast.”  
“She hasn’t forgiven me, she was just being practical.”

The girl’s brown eyes looked at me in confusion, struggling to understand. Of course she couldn’t understand, nobody but Cissy could. My sister was the only person I knew who could despise somebody without ever letting it show or influence any over her behaviour toward that person. 

She could be mad at me, or anyone for that matter, without treating them any differently, at least on the surface. There would only ever be small signs that gave my sisters feelings away, such as a sudden icy glance, abruptly leaving without a goodbye, silences at weird times, or suddenly changing the topic right in the middle of your words. She would never do any of these things at the same time, she liked to spread them out. Narcissa was peculiar like that. She had rules and every mishap, every misstep or action that purposefully went against her wishes, earned the perpetrator a set amount of punishment. 

Ruining her favourite dress when we were both girls had earned me two months, after which she’d once again scolded me and once her lecture ended she’d hugged me and told me I was forgiven. When she had to drag yet another girl out of my bed two weeks before I married Rod, after she’d told me at least a 100 times not to get with girls, she’d punished me for three months. And that time I’d run my mouth at her wedding and gave her husband a piece of my mind, my punishment had lasted six whole months. 

I explained all this to Hermione, who seemed intrigued by the while idea. Honestly she seemed a little too intrigued by everything concerning my baby sister. I felt a small pang of irrational jealousy at every new question she asked, but I grit my teeth and answered all her questions.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my favourite people on the interwebs!
> 
> Here's the next chapter, I hope it doesn't disappoint. Thank you for hanging in here with me :) 
> 
> Please read and feel free to let me know what you think.

Things remained the same after that bloody night. We stayed where we were and luckily no more deatheaters showed up. Although it wasn’t luck, Hermione just didn’t lure any more dangerous men to our home. 

It still bothered me immensely that she had done such a thing, but I couldn’t talk to her about it. I continued teaching her more and more magic, knowing full well that I was only corrupting her further. She grew as a witch every day and I was torn. 

Part of me loved watching her become more and more powerful. I wanted to see her grow and it made me proud to see how quickly she learned. I wanted to give her what she wanted, whatever it was and in a way making her happy made me happy. I knew she didn’t heed my advice about trying to hold on to herself. She hadn’t really heard any of my warnings, and I didn’t know how to make her listen if she obviously didn’t want to hear whatever I had to say about it. 

The memory of what happened the night I killed my brother in law was double sided. On one side the sheer thought that Hermione had seen me like that horrified me and filled me with shame. On the other hand it was also a strangely happy memory. Hermione had witnessed my inner demon and she still loved me. 

I had a hard time dealing with the memory of what came after I’d finished the man off. It was undoubtedly the most twisted thing I’d ever done, as well as the most fulfilling. I could hardly stop thinking about it, and every time I did it made me weak in the knees, wanting more. I could have Hermione whenever I wanted, the sand in the hourglass had shifted and I was mostly in charge now, which I honestly liked a lot better but it wasn’t enough. Not after that night. She had seemed to love that side of me and I loved that she did, but I knew it was wrong. Totally fucked up, not at all the way things were supposed to be. 

I was pushing away that memory almost all the time and usually it worked. Hermione never talked about what had happened at all and I was grateful for that. 

Narcissa didn’t show herself again and I missed her, strange as it was. I hadn’t missed her before she’d lost her husband. I worried about how my sister was doing. How had she told my nephew? It couldn’t have been easy even if Draco was a mommy’s boy. Just because he loved his mother more didn’t mean the lad wouldn’t miss his father. I couldn’t stand not being there to support my sister, or being the cause of her pain. Life never felt quite as alone as when Cissy was mad at me. Perhaps Hermione wasn’t all I needed, of maybe I just needed her to be who she was when I met her. 

I hadn’t known her at all back then but I’d known of her. Brightest witch of her generation, a bookworm, a mudblood, a know it all, Harry Potter’s best friend, but also compassionate. When I had tried to instruct my nephew in the art of occlumency I had seen her in his mind, getting outraged when Moody had tortured a spider in class. I couldn’t understand that a girl like that would ever cast a cruciatus curse, let alone on someone she loved. 

That girl had checked out a while ago. She just slipped away quietly and I wasn’t sure who I was left with. I thought about this while I was staring at her. We were outside. The sun bright in the deep blue sky, a lot of time spend outside and a generous amount of sunny days had given her curls even more of a golden look, and her skin was nowhere near as pale as it had been. She took my hand. 

“Bella what can you tell me about necromancy?,” her voice sounded completely innocent when she casually informed about the darkest magic I knew. I sat down beneath the tree I’d come to think of as our tree.  
“Why would you want to know about that?”  
She sighed and installed herself on my lap.  
“ I think a skill like that might come in handy one day,” she smiled bumping her forehead against mine.   
“That is really dark magic, my love.”  
She shrugged. “So? Do you know much about it?”  
“Hermione…”  
“What?”  
“What exactly do you want to know and why? What on earth would you need that knowledge for?”

She shifted on my lap and ran her thumb over my bottom lip.  
“I was just thinking. A lot of people will die during the upcoming battle and that’s terrible of course, but I could also use that to my advantage. I could reanimate every single dead body and make them fight for our side. That way our numbers will never really diminish. Unless you don’t think such a thing is possible?”  
I was stunned. It was exactly the kind of plan my ex lord could surely get behind, so good I should have come up with it and I wasn’t sure no one on his side hadn’t already thought of it. 

“Well?,” she asked impatiently. “Can it be done? Have you ever controlled a dead body before?”  
I had but I couldn't tell her about it. I didn’t want to. I didn’t even want to think about it. Her plan would probably work but it was just so wrong.  
“Answer me Bella.”  
“You have no idea what you’re asking. Do you even know what happens if you reanimate a body?”  
“No, which is why I’m asking you. Can it be done?”  
“Yes.”  
“Then tell me what I need to know. It’s a good plan, isn’t it?”

I nodded. It wasn’t a bad plan for someone who had no morals. I didn’t doubt that she would be able to do it. The reanimation spell wasn’t too difficult to cast or to maintain. What made the spell so nasty, apart from the obvious, was what came after those dead puppets had fulfilled their task. Just because the puppet master was done didn’t mean that those soulless empty shells would just keel over and go back to being dead. They remained alive and in need of control until they were put down once more. 

Only the person who had raised them could put them down and the only way to kill them was by beheading them. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a problem if most of the people she reanimated were her enemies, but what if the battle turned out differently and she would have to raise all her friends? She wouldn’t be able to kill them when she had to and letting them exist was not a viable option. For one the rotting process wouldn’t really be put off until their bodies stopped moving, reanimating a corpse sped up the decay if anything, and secondly if kept alive beyond a certain time these things would turn violent, all their rage focusing on the person who had denied them their rest.

I explained all this to her in graphic detail but her response frazzled me.   
“I knew it! I knew it could be done!,” she got that power hungry happy look in her eyes and I knew she wouldn’t let it go.  
“Love, you’re not listening.”  
“I am, I am listening. You are telling me it can be done so explain to me what I need to do to make it happen.”  
“I won’t tell you. It’s a horrible spell and it will ruin you!”  
She rolled her eyes at me. “I don’t know what you’re on about, just help me accomplish this.”  
“Absolutely not!”  
“Why not? What does it matter if it will win us the war?”  
“That spell will change you even more.”  
“You’re so worried about a silly spell ruining me, whatever that means but do you know what will happen if your lord beats us? Being chased for being a mudblood, dying because of who my parents are, that will ruin me!,” she sneered. “So teach me!”   
“Hermione, please.”

She wiggled on my lap and gave me puppy eyes, wrapping her fingers in my hair and caressing my scalp. My anger drained and I felt my resolve not to tell her weaken.   
“Don’t make me pry it from your mind. I want to know but I’d rather have you teach me,” she whispered into my ear.  
“There are boundaries. I don’t want you to make all my mistakes.” She kissed me softly and not much later I found myself explaining her everything I knew about necromancy. The basics were simple enough. It was nothing more than sucking up energy from wherever you could find it and chanting a spell that wove it into the body you were trying to reanimate. 

It was very much the same as playing with a puppet on a string, just less complicated and more dangerous. These puppets leaked their dead dark energy into whomever was controlling them. 

I managed to stop her from giving it a try right then and there. I never wanted her to try it out, not ever, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop her eventually. It bothered me how much she wanted to go to that battle and help her friends win the war, and how she called her side our side. It wasn’t that I wasn’t on her side, but she didn’t understand that every step she took nowadays took her further away from everything her side stood for. 

I asked her what she thought Harry would say if she resurrected friends and enemies alike just to help him defeat Voldemort and she shrugged and said it wouldn’t bother him as long as she won the war. She was unbelievably naive and had no idea just how much she had changed. 

I distracted her with my body which worked beautifully. If only I could distract her forever. Thinking of the day that was coming closer and closer I wondered if I would have to resort to locking her up in a deep dark dungeon somewhere just to keep her from getting herself in a whole lot of trouble. I wasn’t sure I could do that, although it started to look like it would be the only solution. 

That same night I woke up alone in our bed in the middle of the might. My mark burned, my heart pounded and there was a sheen of sweat forming on my body. I had no idea where she had disappeared of to but I could guess what she was doing. I growled in frustration.

There was no way I could apparate to her without knowing where she was. I couldn’t do anything but wait for her return. I dragged myself out of bed and sat down at the kitchen table, I had no idea how long she’d been gone exactly but it couldn’t have been anywhere near six hours yet. There was no explanation for how absolutely horrible I felt. The feather on my chest didn’t look quite as colourful as it was supposed to and while I observed it small scarlet droplets started to appear around its edges. 

If only I knew why my mark reacted so hysterically every time, why I felt so weak, too weak to stand. If Hermione felt half as bad as I did right now she would never have left. She was stubborn and for a while I worried about her. What if she did feel just as weak but was just too stubborn to admit it to herself. What if she carried on with whatever she had planned in spite of not being physically up to the task, what if she was getting herself killed?

I didn’t have to worry long.

I suddenly felt a lot better and my chest lit up the kitchen. Through the kitchen window I saw my love and the glowing mark on her chest that appeared extra bright against the night sky. She didn’t come inside and I observed her through the glass. She wasn’t alone, someone was lying at her feet, but I couldn’t see who. I knew what she was doing though.

The figure at her feet got up. I could only see a silhouette but I knew whoever it was they were dead, it was obvious from the way they moved. My heart sank. I stormed out, stomping towards the dumb girl who was so careless in her downfall. The light on my chest lit up the scene in front of me perfectly. They guy my foolish little dark witch had brought was another snatcher, one that I was very familiar with cause he was always stomping his muddy boots all over my sister’s expensive rug. I had never learned his name but I had hexed him more than once on Cissy’s behalf.

Not allowing her to practise had been my mistake. If I had I would have taken her to a graveyard and let her deal with the unpleasantness of reanimating a body that had been dead for a while. I had wanted to spare her that, but faced with this snatcher, another man child barely older than Hermione herself , I knew that having her deal with a rotting corpse would have been a much better lesson. I had no doubt that she’d killed him herself.

The snatcher Hermione was controlling was dancing like that muggle musician, Britney Spears, which made her giggle girlishly. Chills ran down my spine when I looked at her. Her eyes were soulless black holes, the effect of the spell had drained all other colours from her eyeballs, irises and apparently her hair as well. She looked unhinged, her hair a wild obsidian waterfall of unkempt curls that danced around her face in the night breeze. She was about as pale as a reanimated corpse, the only colour she had came from the blood spatters that adorned her skin like rubies. She was only wearing a tank-top but she didn’t seem bothered by the cold air against her skin. She looked like a beautiful demon. 

“My love, what have you done?,” I asked with barely concealed anger.  
Her black eyes calmly drifted over to me.   
“I’m practising, I think I’m doing really well. What do you think?,” there was a hollow to her voice, a lack of emotion that made me uneasy.  
“You killed him just to reanimate him?!”  
“Yes. He’s one of the snatches your disliked most, isn’t he? Didn’t seem like a great loss. I did it for you,” she lied nonchalantly.   
“How.. why.. where did you find him?”  
“Oh, I picked him up at Malfoy Manor,” she didn’t even blink, she just stared at me like she was miles away.

“Are you insane? You could have been killed!”  
“You worry too much Bells.”  
“Bloody hell Hermione, you have to stop this! Stop trying to be the baddest witch of them all. Just stop and try to remember who you are. And for fuck’s sake, quit putting your life in danger for no reason!” My blood boiled. I screamed but I knew nothing of what I had just said got through. Her expression was blank, like she couldn’t imagine why anyone would get so upset over nothing.  
“I know who I am.”  
“Obviously not. You are a light witch, yet here you are playing with a corpse, killing people like it means nothing! Who are you?” I grabbed her shoulders and shook her hard. “Who are you?!”

She pushed me off her, giggling as I tumbled and fell.   
“I am me,” she suddenly said calmly, there was still that strange edge to her voice. She pulled me up, running her fingers through my hair. My rage subsided so spontaneously and completely it amazed me. I literally melted into her embrace.   
“I am me, but who are you, Bells?”  
“I love you,” I breathed.   
“I think you love the idea you have of me and not so much who I am now. And I know you have completely forgotten who you are, why is that?”  
“You changed me, in a good way. I am happy about that.”  
“I like the way you changed me too, why can’t you accept that?,” she breathed into my neck.  
I didn’t have an answer because it was so hard to think with her lips on my skin. 

“You haven’t changed that much, babe. I’ve seen you, remember? I know you love the feeling of warm blood seeping on your feet and...”  
“Please don’t,” I interrupted her.   
“I don’t know why you are so reluctant to show me your true desires.”  
“I’m not.”  
“You are. I know what you fantasize about most but I don’t understand why you’re so scared, or ashamed I guess? You don’t have to pretend to be someone you aren’t. Not with me. Never. I’m not scared of your dark side. Just let go, Bells. It will feel so good.” 

Her hands slipped down my body while she kept whispering to me, telling me to give in, to let go, to be true to myself and I felt myself slipping. Her words were hypnotizing, her touch mesmerizing and her voice had started to develop this strange lull, that was innocent, seductive, calming and oh so tempting. It almost was like she put me under a spell and as soon as I had that thought I recognized the feeling, the magic flowing from her fingers, subduing me. My mind sparked and it hit me that this was far from the first time she’d done this to me. I had wondered about the soothing effect she had on me a couple of times before. I shoved her from me. 

“Finish him off before he becomes violent,” I spat out and went back to bed. 

I couldn’t deal with what I had just discovered. I could hardly believe it. She was even further gone than I’d thought. She had been controlling me for Merlin knew how long. It was enough to make me doubt everything. Obviously the feather that connected us was real and the way I felt about her, but I didn’t think it was enough, not now. 

Everything was so completely messed up. She wouldn’t stop. I had no idea how to make her stop, not when it was so easy for her to bend me to her will. I was strong but I couldn’t protect Hermione from herself while struggling to keep my own demons at bay. I didn’t understand why she had her heart set on turning me back into who I used to be. It made no sense. My darkness was dark, yes and it was obvious I was influencing her with it but that didn’t explain why she was developing these tastes. Why was she suddenly so much into hurting people that the thought of doing something that would have repulsed her not so long ago now made her cream her knickers? 

I had always been a bit of a sadist, even before I had turned into the most feared death eater of them all. But my love for torture was also a way of dealing with the horrible sides of my job description. I had lost my mind in Azkaban when left alone with nothing but my own horrid memories, it had made me even more cruel, but my dark desires had never before tied into my sexual desires this way. Maybe that was just because before any of this I had practically buried any and all of my sexual desires.

I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop worrying about Hermione who still hadn’t come back to bed and I missed my sister. I wanted to talk to Narcissa more than anything but I didn’t want to deal with being away from Hermione and the gruelling pain that came with it, or my sister’s grief and anger. I got up again, summoned my owl and wrote Cissy a letter.

When I was done I went back to bed and finally fell asleep.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there, I know I've kept you waiting for quite a bit this time, mostly because I don't really want to finish this before I have something new to post. It looks like I may have to do that anyway, since we're nearing the end rather rapidly.
> 
> Thank you to all those who have read my stuff, hopefully you will continue to do so. 
> 
> Please feel free to leave comments, and I hope you will enjoy.

It took a week for Hermione’s eyes to lose their complete blackness. Her hair stayed pitch black and even when the whites returned to her eyes the colour of her irises remained something close to black. It wasn’t just her appearance that had changed,she only vaguely reminded me of the girl I loved in more ways than one . She didn’t cook the muggle way anymore and made us steak twice. 

I felt her influencing me more and more often and usually by the time I realised what she was doing it was very hard to pull myself free. Our bond was still growing and at times it felt like we were one and the same person. I didn’t have to use legilimency to peer into her thoughts, whenever she wanted something badly enough, or thought about something strongly, I knew it too and at times it was difficult to determine which one of us was thinking something first. 

I was less and less capable of resisting her at all. I wanted to, but another, ever growing part of me didn’t. Ever since we’d gotten together she’d been somewhat of an addiction, to put it mildly, but this new, completely dark version of her was so alluring and mesmerizing I felt even more drawn to her than before. 

With all the influencing and the thought sharing it was close to impossible to determine if I was the one having all these dark desires or she, which made it incredibly hard to fight against them. 

Fighting her dark side started to feel like a pointless exercise and the more I tried to fight her the less I was certain that I wanted to. What did it matter? We were both still doomed and maybe we both deserved to die. If that was true, we might as well have some fun while we lasted. So I gave in. I gave her what she apparently wanted most of me. 

I let more and more of my old self shine through and soon enough I felt that familiar restlessness return. My original addiction came back to me with a vengeance and when my love suggested we’d go out to find someone to entertain ourselves with, I was eager. 

Hermione seemed keen to capture another snatcher but I thought doing so was needlessly dangerous. It wasn’t hard to convince her that it would be far easier and more fun to simply snatch some random nobody. Why pretend that we were doing this for any other reason than our own twisted desires?

So we apparated half a country away and brought home a pretty but bland muggle woman who sat right in between me and Hermione, age wise. Hermione had chosen our victim and I couldn’t let go of the idea that she’d picked a redhead because of her ties to the Weasley clan. I baptised the woman Not-Ginny which made my love laugh. 

Not-Ginny was having a full blown panic attack, which suited me well, although it made it more difficult to manually restrain her. I liked restraining muggles the muggle way cause without falter they always thought due to my size that they would be able to overpower me, especially the male specimens. I liked proving them wrong and humiliating them by being much tinier, yet also far stronger. I was particularly strong physically, even for a witch. During my short marriage to Rodolphus I had devoted myself to gaining as much physical strength as possible and had chucked enough bone density and muscle strength potions to permanently make me far stronger than I looked.

So I held the woman in place and Hermione stepped forward and whisked away Not-Ginny’s clothes before she unleashed a bunch of obscure spells in quick succession that made the woman howl in pain, without doing any visible harm to her. I let the go of my squirming cargo and Not-Ginny’s body twisted and curled up in various unnatural looking positions while the curses ran their course. 

“Why are you doing this to me?,” Not-Ginny wailed as soon as her body had calmed down.   
Instead of answering her victim Hermione send a nice crisp crucio her way that made fresh screams rise up from the body between us, accompanied by the sound of flesh scraping over the floorboards as Not-Ginny was starting a whole new dance of unpleasantness. 

Not-Ginny was crying and the black haired version of Hermione I’d grown accustomed to flicked her wand. Blood started seeping from the woman’s pores, covering the squirming form completely in what looked like a shiny red coat of paint. 

“Puh.. pl.. please, please don’t k.. k.. kk.. kkkkill me!,” the helpless redhead stammer- screamed when she saw what looked like all her blood come out.  
“Not yet,” was all Hermione said which earned her another heart wrenching scream. 

I moved my gaze from the bloody pile of woman at my feet to the sexy minx in front of me. She looked much paler with those coal curls framing her face and every time I looked into the black pits that were once soft brown eyes I shivered. She was a far cry from the girl I had carved that nasty word in not so long ago. Ever since her hair colour had changed she paraded around in black tank tops that showed off her humble but shapely chest as well as the colourful feather upon it, and skin tight black pants that made her bum look extra plump. 

When I first met her she’d reminded me slightly of a deer but nothing about her seemed shy or deer like now. She no longer fumbled with her fingers or chewed her bottom lip. Her chin had permanently risen up and every step she took was filled with confidence. She sashayed her small hips now, with an attitude that was equal parts disturbing and alluring. 

Still, somewhere deep down I wondered if I had possessed her somehow. She was so disturbingly familiar in her desire to cause absolute destruction. Familiar and tantalizing. 

She moved on from magical means to muggle ways of torture. She knew how to inflict pain, she didn’t mock or taunt, she giggled like the schoolgirl she was underneath all of this. She’d learned from the best. I finally understood why it had turned her on so much to watch me rip up Lucius. Looking at her made me glow. She didn’t just make her victims blood flow. 

In the back of my mind I remembered that outraged little face from Draco’s memories and my stomach twisted itself up in knots as my conscience caught up with me. I saw myself when I looked at my love. I recognized that glassy, dreamy, cruelty in her eyes and I knew exactly why she shivered, what thrilled her so much. I had unwittingly recreated her in my own image in such a short time, which was horrifying but even through my guilt and horror my arousal grew like wildfire just from watching her give in to all the worst parts in herself. 

Her eyes caught mine and I felt all the horror and guilt flow from my mind, like she sucked it right out of me. The connection between us had never felt stronger. I kept staring at her, focusing my energy on what she was doing and realised I could feel it. I felt exactly what she was doing and how it made her feel. Almost like she was an extension of myself, like her hands were my own. 

Fingers cramped up around the knife handle, the knuckles white with force. Why so stressed? The grip relaxed and the rushed rhythm beating through the index finger pressing against the knife blade disappeared. Moving slowly, the pressure built up around the blade until the skin beneath it came apart. A bright red stream flowed down already flaky red skin. The blade slicing deeper tearing up everything in its way, moving down, forming a wider, longer river. The ultimate release. 

Warm wetness flowing over the back of a hand. Heartbeat rising a sigh escaping. Satisfaction. The woman whimpered, her throat probably already too ripped to scream. The knife was moved a finger pressed into the steaming red mess left behind, more warmth flowing as another finger reaches in, nails hitching behind torn skin, grasping at muscles that normally stayed hidden. On to the next part, another line, more blood, more sensations, more satisfaction. Over and over in a seemingly endless loop of cruelty, stomach fluttering, knees wanting to give way. No not yet, first, more!

She dropped the knife she’d been holding suddenly and turned around to face me.  
“What’s happening?,” she asked and for a second I thought she’d finally snapped out of her evil streak.   
“What do you mean?”   
“I can feel you,” she stammered sounding truly confused. 

I touched her face and it was the strangest thing. I felt her soft warm flesh beneath my fingertips but I also felt the ghost of my own fingers caressing my own cheek. Her fingers brushed my jawline and it was like an echo chamber of sensations. There was my touch and the echo of my touch against my own skin as well as her touch and the echo of her caress. It was trippy and unlike anything I’d ever felt before. 

“Holy shit,” she whispered, turned her attention back to the woman, waved her wand and ended Not-Ginny’s suffering in an explosion of blood, that left the both of us covered in the sticky stuff. 

I wished I could say that it repulsed me that she pushed her bloody lips on mine but it didn’t. in fact feeling everything twice was fantastic, and to say the blood didn’t bother me would be an understatement. She was wild, my little dark thing, wild and unhinged and I absolutely loved it. She spoke directly to all the charred parts of my soul and I revelled in her depravity, got lost in in completely. 

An unexpected pop announced the end of our privacy and when I looked up to find my sister’s icy blue gaze stare down on me I felt caught. She gaped at the gory remains of Not-Ginny we were practically on top of and her mouth formed a hard line. 

“Is this how the two of you have been spending your days then? Torturing random muggles for the hell of it?”

I magicked my dress back on and stood up. Hermione was much less hasty in her efforts to cover herself back up. She merely grabbed her tank top and slowly slid it down over her body, covering only the bare necessities.   
“I don’t think it’s any of your business what Bella and I do in our free time,” she snapped. “You’d do well to mind your own business.”  
I didn’t like the way she mouthed off at my sister but didn’t reprimand her.   
“Bellatrix has always been my business miss Granger, and she always will be. Now if you’ll excuse us.” Narcissa took my hand and apparated us to a shed on a neighbouring farm, far enough away to give us some privacy but still close enough to not make my mark burn. 

She sat down on a hay bale and I plopped down next to her. Without a word she aimed her wand at me and cast a scourgify. My dress, skin and hair instantly felt cleaner. 

“I was sure your letter exaggerated things,” was the first thing she said. “But now I think you’ve actually downplayed the situation. You didn’t tell me you had given in to her.”  
“It’s been more than ten days since I wrote you that letter. I’m not made of stone okay. She is so..”  
“Manipulative?,” she sneered.  
“Enticing. I’m only human.”  
“So the mudblood is now hunting muggles for sports? Really Bella she should join our side. That would solve all your problems.”

I couldn’t deny that I’d had the same thought before. I had never brought it up because I didn’t think she would go for it, besides, I didn’t even believe in that cause.  
“She cares about her friends too much.”  
“I can’t imagine she does.”  
“This is only the first time she’s ever tortured anyone.”  
“Apart from you, you mean?”  
“I don’t remember telling you that.”  
Narcissa smiled. “I saw your scar when I healed you and I checked the memory of how that happened, which I immediately regretted.”  
I blushed at the thought of my sister seeing with her own eyes what had went on that night.  
“Why do you let her treat you like that?”  
“Tell me that’s the only memory you’ve looked into.”  
“Well to be honest I was so astounded by what I found that I’m afraid I didn’t stop there.”  
I grunted, burying my face in my hands. 

“This hold she has on you is bizarre, Bells.”  
“It’s the bond.”  
“I suspect she is the one making you suffer every time she leaves you. I have read everything that’s ever been written about this bond and it’s not supposed to hurt you so much so soon after being separated from her. None of the 150 cases I’ve read about reported separation illness within less than a week. ”   
“What we have is special,” I said weakly.   
“Of course it is. I don’t doubt that but I suspect that for some reason she is controlling you constantly.”

I felt caught all over again but decided not to tell her anything. “Why would she do that and how?”  
“She’s read more dark books than you have, hasn’t she?”  
“Cissy she is just a girl not some evil force to be reckoned with.”  
My sister’s eyebrows knitted together and raised when she looked at me, her hand gripping my arm.   
“She’s you. She is exactly like you were before you met her.”  
I sighed because my sister was right. 

“My darkness has infested her. I guess it makes sense but I didn’t expect it to take over so fully.”  
“That’s just it. The bond is supposed to balance the differences between the two of you. One isn’t supposed to overshadow the other.” Her cold slender fingers caressed Hermione’s name on my arm. She inspected the carving carefully.

“There is so much dark magic radiating from this scar,” she said pensively.  
“It’s just a scar, I don’t feel any magic coming from it,” I shrugged.  
“You can’t feel it?”  
“No.”

She waved her wand at my arm and I cried out in pain, although the scars didn’t start bleeding it felt like my arm was splinched. Narcissa tapped her pointer finger to her bottom lip as she watched me squirm in pain. 

“Does it start bleeding whenever she touches it?,” she asked suddenly, a look like a lightbulb went on in her head passing over her face.   
“Yes. Do you know the spell she used?”  
She didn’t answer and flicked her wand again, making dark purple steam rise up from the letters decorating my arm. There was a hissing sound and my scars blackened. My skin felt like it was on fire, but apart from that nothing happened and when she stopped messing with the letters they turned back to normal looking scars.   
“I can’t undo what she did,” she finally said.   
“But you do know what spell she used?”

“It surprises me that you don’t. In spite of you already being soulmates, she’s bound the two of you together even tighter.”  
I racked my brain trying to find what my sister was getting at but nothing sprang to mind.   
“Which spell?”  
“Dominus Mirabilo,” she answered curtly.   
The only thing I knew about dominus mirabilo was that it was a spell that was mostly used in arranged marriages. It was a way for the husband to make his new bride compliant. It was the closest you could get to forcing someone’s love. Cissy and I had both been lucky that neither of our husbands had resorted to that spell. It explained how Hermione was able to control me with her touch. 

“Why on earth would she ever use a spell like that on me?”  
“Because she’s an ignorant mudblood who knows nothing of the old ways. She probably thought it sounded romantic or something, or maybe she wanted you compliant. Whatever the reason, because of your bond it has had a different effect. You can’t force love if it’s already there, can you?”  
“But you think that’s why I get sick so soon and why she’s turning out so dark?”  
“It has definitely destabilized the bond that was already there. I’m pretty sure no one has ever used that spell on their soulmate before so the exact results are anyone’s guess.”  
“But you don’t think that’s why she’s suddenly into torture and stuff?,” I asked hesitantly.   
My sister’s eyes met mine again. “Maybe she was already prone to darkness. Did you consider that, Bells? She reminds me very much of you at that age. She obviously always has had a great hunger for knowledge and I imagine she’s felt quite trapped and helpless at times. Weren’t you exactly like that once?”  
“Maybe. But I didn’t turn so dark in such a short time that my hair turned black because of it. I didn’t even know that was a thing, did you?”  
“Well, your hair was always black. And you didn’t fall in love with someone like you. The battle is in three days.”

“Hermione’s determined to go and fight, Cissy. I don’t know how I’m supposed to stop her. She has this crazy plan that she thinks will single handedly win her the war.”  
“What kind of plan?”

I explained the plan to my sister and told her everything about all the things I’d been teaching my love. I could tell my sister had trouble imagining any of it and felt her rifling through my mind. 

“I need that potion, Cissy. Altered or not.”  
“Bella, no.”  
“She is not the girl I fell in love with, not any more but I do still love her. She will turn me into something even darker than I was before. I can’t let that happen.”  
“And you’re willing to kill her because of that? You think you can, now that you have developed a conscience?”  
“Look what she tried to do me, what she’s already done. If she defeats the Dark Lord with her army of undead she will become our next tyrannical leader and I will be right next to her. I don’t want that for either of us.”  
Narcissa pondered my words carefully, grabbed my hand and apparated us back to Hermione.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well.. here it is.. the end is still nearing. Things are taking a bit of a weird turn but I guess that will surprise no one. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy 
> 
> Please tell me what you think lovely people!

“Miss Granger,” my sister began speaking as soon as we landed and sat herself down on the couch Hermione was occupying, her slender, manicured hands landing on the girl’s bare thigh in a strangely familiar gesture. “Bellatrix has told me all about your excellent plan to win the war.”  
The young black haired witch stared at the trespassing hand in amazement.  
“She did?,” she stammered.  
“Yes. I think it’s the best idea I’ve ever heard. A guaranteed win,” she moved a bit closer to my girl which flustered Hermione even more. “There is only one small problem.”  
“Which problem is that?”  
“You cannot fight for the light side with an army of the undead at your heels.They wouldn’t understand or approve, but someone else would.”  
“The Dark Lord?,” Hermione gasped.   
“Yes miss Granger. He would appreciate your brilliance, not to mention how easy it will make it for him to forgive Bellatrix if he discovers the prize she has laid at his feet. You.”  
“Bb but I’m a mudblood.”  
“Yes, and he is a halfblood. If you win our side the war all will be forgiven. And no one will judge your more exotic tastes in magic or any of your other less than vanilla appetites,” Narcissa motioned at the remains of Not-Ginny. “Can you say the same of your friends?”

Hermione looked at me and I was blown away by what I found in her eyes. Forgotten were her friends and everything she ever stood for. She was almost already beyond considering switching sides.

“Cissy, I’m hanging by a thread myself. You have no guarantee he will not kill us both.”  
“You know as well as I do that he values usefulness above all else. If Hermione can prove her usefulness, which I have no doubt she can do, he will spare both of you,” a smooth smile slid over her features.  
“Do you really think so?,” Hermione sounded way too enthusiastic.  
“Absolutely,” my sister squeezed the girl’s leg and slid her hand slightly further up the inner thigh beneath her fingers. I felt a jolt of second hand arousal, that I pushed down immediately. 

“Do you know how humiliating it will be for Potty and all those Order bastards if you join our glorious cause in spite of your bloodstatus?” I watched in amazement as my sister brought her face closer to that of Hermione, their bodies nearly touching. I could feel the heat through our connection. “That’s why he will let you live, you and the woman who brought you to him. You will not just be a mudblood, you will be his prized mudblood.”

Hermione’s eyes lit up and I knew she would join the Dark Lord and abandon everything on a whim. Maybe my sister was right. The Dark Lord was not one to stick to his own rules if there was something to be gained. He had won some muggles over to his cause, and damned a bunch of purebloods for no other reason than he didn’t like their faces. Maybe this was the way to our happily ever after. It just didn’t feel right. In fact, nothing about this felt right. 

Not the weird way my sister was approaching my love, her own knee between the girl’s legs, one arm leaning right next to the other’s shoulder, or the way Hermione’s black eyes drifted towards the displayed cleavage in front of her. Narcissa’s body was sending out a message I had trouble wrapping my head around. What was she trying to accomplish? Did she think she had to literally seduce Hermione to the dark side even when it was so obvious that the girl was more than ready to join our bloody cause? 

Evidently I was not the only one who was confused by all of it. 

“Narcissa, what are you doing?,” the girl on the couch asked when Narcissa gave her a little push and she fell back into the cushions, stretching out below her blonde attacker in quite a vulnerable position. The hem of her tank top crawled up in the sudden movement, and revealed that she wasn’t wearing anything besides that single piece of clothing.

“I’m talking to you, dear. Don’t my sister and you ever have conversations?,” she husked, crawling over the girl below her. The hand that had been on Hermione’s thigh moved up to her throat, caressing the soft flesh. The touch was innocent enough, yet anything but. I subdued a shiver. A heart beating down my throat, emphasizing the tantalising caress.   
“But why are you .. touching me?,” the girl practically sighed, while still sounding much more shy than I’d heard in a long time.   
Narcissa flashed another blinding smile. I only saw that smile from the side since it wasn’t aimed at me but I could feel it’s effect settle in my gut.   
“Why do you think I’m touching you?,” her voice sounded like sweet melted butter.  
“I have no fucking clue!”  
“Language, dear.”

I didn’t know what Narcissa was up to, why she was moving in on my girl the way she was. I wanted to stop her but I couldn’t move or avert my eyes. I was fascinated and horrified at the same time. Through our connection I could feel Hermione’s heartbeat and her rising arousal. I felt the ghost of Cissy’s fingers move over my own belly as one of her hands crawled up under the girl’s top, hitching it up even further, her other hand still at her throat, her nails gently scraping the skin in a lazy rhythm. I was melting.

Was she trying to punish me? Was this part of what I had coming for killing the husband she obviously cared a lot less about than I had ever imagined? Was she trying to make some other kind of point? Did she want to show me that what Hermione and I had wasn’t very special after all? 

“Things haven’t been the same since you manipulated Bella into killing my husband,” my sister purred directly into Hermione’s ear, making her breath hitch, which caused tingles to run down my spine. There was electricity in the air but it was completely different from the energy that was usually there between me and Hermione. For how little she was actually doing, the way my sister was succeeding at turning the girl beneath her into warm pudding was awe inspiring. 

I had never seen Narcissa like this, of course I hadn’t, and I would have been happy to never feel this amazingly obscene sexual pull coming off her. But I felt it now. I saw it unfold right in front of my eyes. I felt more than saw its effects, and they were pretty hard to ignore. I tried though. I tried to shut off the constant stream of sensations and desires flowing into me through the bond but I couldn’t.

I found myself staring at Cissy’s well rounded, velvet clad, behind, and the dark, sheer stockings that showed, now that the position she was in had hitched up her skirt quite a lot. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d seen her legs but they seemed shapely. It was strange to witness her like this. If she hadn’t been my sister I could have fancied her. She was very beautiful, if not a little too classy to hover over a girl in such a predatory way. 

“I’ve been very.. lonely.. these last days,” my sister drawled. Her voice managed to be seductive and disdainful at the same time. “And.. I guess I just wanted to know what all the fuss is about, little dark witch.”

I was waiting for the rest of Cissy’s words but they didn’t come. The only sound came from Hermione’s increasingly laboured breathing and the whizzing in my own ears as I was quickly becoming overwhelmed with conflicting emotions and sensations. I didn’t want Narcissa to touch what was mine and I certainly didn’t want Hermione to feel the way she felt but at the same time her pleasure was quite literally mine, which was extremely disturbing.

Hermione’s arms folded around Narcissa’s neck and she pulled their faces closer together to unite their lips. The kiss they shared was chaste, restrained, due to my sister who was obviously holding back. It was a teaser more than anything. Cool fingers pulling on nipples quite expertly made both me and the girl below her squirm.

There had to be a reason. I knew Narcissa and I didn’t think she was doing this because she was even slightly interested in Hermione, there had to be some other motivation. I couldn’t think of any possible reasons and in fact it was quite impossible to think at all when Cissy’s hand swept down slowly and carefully. I was sure she wouldn’t take things this far but she did. 

Her fingers brushed back and forth over that small sensitive pebble between the thighs that were willingly parting quite widely below her. Hermione gasped and her pelvis rocked to Cissy’s rhythm. It didn’t take long before she moved further down. 

“Do you love my sister, you little mudblood slut?,” she asked suddenly and her voice was like ice, her fingers teetering on the edge of the girl’s entrance.   
“Yes,” Hermione moaned.   
“And you think she’ll enjoy watching you like this?”  
“Maybe not.. ooooh.”  
I had to bite my tongue not to let out a moan myself. I finally managed to closed my eyes cause I didn’t want to be reminded of what I was feeling, it was too twisted even for me. 

“Why did you use Dominus Mirabilo on her?”  
The question only briefly startled Hermione who was coming apart through the sweet hot pleasure Narcisssa’s fingers were invoking in her. She couldn’t answer.  
“Why did you imperio her when she was already fully willing to do whatever you wanted her to do?,” my sister continued and again there came no answer, just sounds of desire.   
“Why are you always, always controlling her? And why are you letting me do this?”

Hermione was so close I could taste her orgasm at the back of my throat, it pulsed through me getting ready to explode. 

Narcissa stopped moving her fingers.  
“Well? Answer me!,” she hissed.  
“I… I don’t know. I can’t even think. Please, don’t stop, please!”  
“If you don’t start treating her better I will find you. And rest very assured that I will hurt you worse than she ever would. You won’t even see it coming, you filthy, faithless mudblood whore!” 

At that the worst pain I could imagine made me tumble right out of my chair and howl. It was close to a crucio only this pain was specifically tearing apart the most sensitive part I could think of. I heard Hermione react in much the same way to what my sweet little sister had done to her, to both of us without knowing it.

“Bella?” I couldn’t look Narcissa in the eyes but I knew she was staring at me when she sat up, smoothing down her clothes and crossing her legs.

“You fucking bitch!,” Hermione groaned.  
“Language, dear,” my sister answered calmly and suddenly Hermione started to giggle. She pulled her tank top back own over her thighs, sat back up and started to laugh even louder. 

“What’s so funny?,” Narcissa asked.  
“Bella and I are extremely connected,” Hermione explained as she got up and I wanted to tell her to stop talking but the words froze in my mouth, I couldn’t say anything. “ We can feel each other quite literally.”  
“How do you mean?”  
“I mean that Bella could feel everything you just did to me, which is probably why she didn’t stop you.”

I didn’t often see my sister flustered but she turned beet red and was now as actively avoiding my eyes as I was avoiding hers. Hermione disappeared up the stairs and an uncomfortable silence settled between Narcissa and me. 

“Why didn’t you stop me,” she finally asked me after way too much silent tension building up.   
“I wanted to, believe me, but I couldn’t.”  
“She was controlling you.”  
“I don’t think so, I couldn’t feel her controlling me and I as far as I know she has to be touching me to do that.”  
“Not if you can feel what she’s feeling all the time. Can you?” Just mentioning the possibility drove another blush to her face.   
I nodded and her blush deepened.   
“Why do you suppose that is, the shared feelings and stuff?”  
“Two types of bonds messing up one another’s magic.”

We said nothing and I went to pour myself and my shy blonde sister a glass of muggle whiskey, which she happily accepted.

“I can’t believe she would actually consider joining the Dark Lord.”  
“She’s not just considering it, Bells. She’s basically made up her mind about it.”  
“Do you really think he wouldn’t kill her?”  
“Not before the battle anyway. She might be a valuable asset. Depending on who wins and how useful she really turns out to be he might let her live.”  
“And if we lose she’ll end up in Azkaban.”  
“Likely.”

We sipped and finally managed to establish eye contact without blushing. 

“You are right about her, she’s into the dark stuff way too much. You need to find a way to control her.”  
I had been trying to control her from the moment I felt her slip and had failed miserably. I really was at a loss.   
“I need that potion Cissy. I need to undo this bond. Everything is such a mess. I love her but things are spinning out of control. She’s so smart, and she’s stronger than I am, or at least she will be, soon.”  
“Nonsense, dear. She’s just a mudblood.”  
“Don’t be stupid. I have felt her power, I’ve seen it. I’ve taught her things. She is so, so strong.”   
“No. You are letting her make you weak. Come on Bella, you’re a Black, we are strong. We don’t turn into domesticated little wives just because someone puts us on a leash. Find your strength. She will only be able to make you do something you don’t want to if you allow it. Let her be evil, let her torture some muggles, who cares? Just be sure you don’t end up like any of those muggles.”

Her callousness surprised me when it shouldn’t have. Narcissa was a kitten compared to most of the Dark Lord’s men, she was a real peach compared to who I used to be but she was still a dark witch. She had played the role of perfectly friendly loving mother, devoted housewife and skilled healer so well and for so long, sometimes I forgot who she was at her core. She was selfish and protective of herself and those she loved. The rest of the world could shrivel up and die for all she cared. 

I didn’t know how to explain to my sister that I didn’t want that. Not for myself and not for the kind hearted girl that I was sure was still somewhere buried deep inside Hermione, rattling the bars of the cage this new version of her had locked her up in. 

“I can’t fight her darkness and my own.”  
“Since when has fighting your darkness ever been of any concern to you?”  
“I don’t know.”  
“Since you met her I suppose.”  
“Yes.”  
“Would it be so bad to go back?”  
“Yes it would be. I’m already carrying all this guilt.”  
“You feel guilty?,” her eyebrow raised. “About what?”  
“About everything. All the people I’ve tortured. The destruction I’ve caused and now I feel guilty for letting the light of my life turn into pure darkness.”  
“I’m not sure that last one is your fault.”  
“It doesn’t matter if it is or not. The thing is I’ve felt the other side now, and it’s so much better to try and redeem yourself. Being the way I was eats at you. It’s all fun and games in the beginning. Darkness is compelling and seductive and it’s great to feel so powerful and above everything and think there is nothing you can’t do. It’s thrilling and exciting all the way down into the pit, but once you’re there, you’re all alone with all the horrible things you’ve done and nothing to look forward to. Everything is empty and drab and you might as well be dead because you’re not really alive anyway. I don’t want to go back there.”

“But you won’t be alone, she’ll be there with you and I’ll always be your sister.”  
“Yes but it won’t mean anything. Love won’t last, not even this kind of love. We’ll always be bound but it will become meaningless.”  
“So you’d rather kill her?”  
“I don’t think I have a choice.”  
“The potion will immediately erase any trace of the bond but it will take about 24 hours to kill her. It’s irreversible, so even if you start to regret giving it to her, there will be nothing you can do about it. She will die.”  
“I won’t change my mind, please, just bring me the potion.”  
“Whatever you want, Bella,” she said, got up and disapparated.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is it! Hope you enjoy, sorry for the delay :D

“You really want to join the Dark Lord?”

Most of the day had been spent in bed. Discovering all the ways in which this newest manifestation of our bond could improve our carnal desires, had taken up almost all of our time and energy. Being able to directly feel everything exactly the way she felt it, made everything we’d been doing before, seem less special, less mind blowing and a lot less satisfying. We were both determined to make the most of our new gift. Eventually hunger had driven us to the kitchen and while we were eating I decided to ask her the question that had been plaguing me all day. 

“Narcissa is right. I can no longer support the light side. Look at me, I am nowhere near the same girl.”  
“Yes but why join Him? Why can’t we just stay out of it?”  
“We can’t just abandon your sister. She’s already lost her husband. She needs our support.”  
A pang of jealousy erupted in my chest when she mentioned my sister for a second time, which drove her to grab my hand, her thumb gently stroking my palm. The ache in my chest evaporated.  
“Bella, please don’t be jealous. ”  
“You love my sister.” I could feel her love swirling through her. It was strong and nowhere near platonic. The jealousy made me nauseous for a second before she discarded the emotion on my behalf.  
“I only love her because you do, because I can feel your love for her.”  
“I don’t want my sister the way you do!,” I snarled and as soon as I’d closed my mouth my irritation vanished. I found myself thinking that it wasn’t that strange,that Hermione wanted Narcissa, after all, my sister was very appetizing.

I pulled my hand back but even after that images of Narcissa looming over Hermione from the girl’s point of view kept attacking my brain, the sensation of her golden hair caressing my face and the heat coming off her body flooding my senses, making me weak. I felt the way she’d touched Hermione all over again and then I saw myself joining them. The three of us naked as newborns. Two sets of hands moving over my body, lips nibbling my skin, an expression of wanton lust spread on my sister’s face. The sounds and smells of arousal and the sheer pleasure of it all, ravaging me. It was hard to tell whose pleasure I was feeling but it didn’t matter, I was in ecstasy. I only barely managed to subdue a moan. It was the most vivid fantasy I’d ever experienced and it wasn’t my own. 

“Stop it!,” I screeched, jumping up and putting my wrist under a steady stream of cold water at the sink.  
Hermione giggled and the images disappeared. “I’m just teasing you, babe.”  
“Please, don’t make me want that, it’s sick and I don’t even want to think about it.”  
“Why not? Nobody is judging you.”  
“Hermione please listen to me for once.”  
“I just don’t get what the big deal is. I’m pretty sure she could get into it.”  
“You are so wrong. She wouldn’t touch you. She only wound you up to hurt you, to punish you. It was a warning, that’s all.”  
“Bella babe, you lack imagination.”  
My stomach dropped. 

I had completely lost my appetite when I finally took my frozen arms from under the stream and closed the tap. I poured myself a whiskey. The girl across the kitchen table stared at me. 

“Sometimes I wonder if you even love me any more.”  
“Of course I do.”  
“Then why are you always mad at me?”  
“Well, maybe if you’d allow me to actually feel my own feelings for a change I could work through my anger.”  
“I can’t stand it when you’re angry at me. I’m sorry. I love you so much, I’m just scared of losing you. I know I have changed a lot, hell I don’t even look the same. I feel like I’m more myself than ever, but I’m not sure you like me any more, do you?”  
Desperation lapped at my skin and I got up and wrapped her up in an embrace.  
“I will always love you, you silly girl. It’s impossible for me to not love you.”  
She slowly calmed down. 

Not long after that she asked me to take her to the Dark Lord, which lead to another heated argument. This time she didn’t suppress my anger at all and I lost it for a moment but after that I started to feel a lot better. Maybe we could work on ourselves, on our relationship. Maybe we weren’t doomed after all. She assured me she wouldn’t make any rash decisions and run off to meet the Dark Lord as soon as my back was turned and we ended our day the same way as it had begun. 

I was hopeful that all was not lost, but before I let myself drift off to sleep I put up anti apparition wards around the room and sealed it shut. I didn’t think they were necessary precautions but the security of knowing she wouldn’t be able to run off and do something stupid made me sleep better.

When I woke up she was pacing the room like a caged animal.  
“Why the hell have you locked me in here?”  
“Come back to bed my love, it’s too early to get this upset.” It really was too early, the day had only just begun and even if I would let her meet the Dark Lord I would not advise her to wake him at this hour. His morning temper was even worse than my own.  
“No! You know where I have to go! I have to secure our future.”  
All my hopes vanished when I sat up.

“He will kill you on sight.”  
“I won’t let him. Now let me out!”  
“You are not strong enough to save yourself, my love. Put this whole idea out of your mind.”  
“No! Let me go!” She stomped her feet, her pitch black curls dancing around her face, an ugly scowl plastered on her beautiful face. It was like looking into a mirror.  
“You will stay here.”  
She stared at me with hatred.

A small tapping sound disrupted the loaded silence between us and I noticed Cissy’s owl rapping its beak against the bedroom window. I got up to let the bird in and took the small parcel from its leg. It was a tiny vial with a note wrapped around it. 

“I am trusting you to do the right thing, love C,” said the scrap of parchment. 

I held up the the vial between my thumb and pointer finger. The bottle contained an innocent looking light blue fluid with swirling silvery and grass green streaks in it.  
“What is that?,” Hermione asked, her temper tantrum forgotten at the sight of the mysterious potion in my hand.  
“Something my sister send me,” I answered coolly.  
She frowned. “Is that the potion she’s been working on? The potion that will make it so we can live independently?”  
“Yes,” I lied.  
“Why would she send you that now that I’ve decided to join your side? We can be together forever, right?”  
“We do need it.”  
“No. Throw it away.”

I uncorked the vial, a weird combination of blueberries, pine and butter wafted out of the bottle.  
“Throw it away now!,” she came at me and I knew that if I didn’t act fast she would waste the potion. I gathered my power and had her bound and helpless before she even reached me. 

I chucked the potion down my throat. It didn’t taste anywhere near as good as it smelled and it hadn’t smelled very good to begin with. 

“Bella no!,” she screamed and then she was screaming for a new reason. She writhed in her bonds and when I undid them she was still squirming in pain. I knelt down beside her and caressed her hair while looking at her pained expression and then I let my eyes drift to her chest.

The feather was bleeding and rapidly losing colour. It turned completely black right in front of my eyes and then it started to peel off her chest like old wallpaper. The dry remains fell to the floor and crumbled to dust. I looked down and saw my own feather was gone as well, but I wasn’t in pain, not like the girl next to me who looked like I had cursed her. 

I watched as the black slowly disappeared from her hair until it was completely back to the golden brown I had missed. Hermione stopped moving and moaning and when she opened her eyes I was greeted by that gentle, gold speckled light brown that I loved so much. 

I still loved her, just as much but it did feel different. The connection was gone. I couldn’t feel her or any of her emotions anymore. I was once again, completely alone, alone with my thoughts, my guilt and my love. Something important had been taken from me and I felt tears dripping down my cheeks.

“I can’t feel you anymore,” she whispered. “What have you done, where are you?”  
“I am right here, my love,” I answered but my voice was choked and wobbly.  
She sat up and looked at me in confusion.  
“What happened, why do I feel so different?”  
“Everything is alright, you’re going to be fine,” I cooed, gently running my fingertips along her jawline. 

She pressed her lips against mine and I kissed her back with everything I had but something was missing and strangely enough it only made me feel more empty and alone. 

“I love you,” I whispered when I broke the kiss.  
“I love you too.” I knew her words weren’t empty but they felt that way now that I could no longer feel that she meant them, how she meant them. 

“Oh my god!,” she gasped suddenly. “Did I really almost join Voldemort?”  
It wasn’t hard to see how much pain that thought caused her.  
“I did, didn’t I? I wanted to betray everything and everyone and you, you tried to stop me. You did.”  
“It was all my fault, my darkness was infecting you.”  
“I.. I.. I have done things!,” fresh panic slipped into her voice.  
“We have all done things, my love.”

I only had to glance at her to know what was going through her mind, to see the crushing guilt and regret fall down on her shoulders, pushing her into the ground. 

“I’m a monster,” she wailed and it broke my heart to see her like this, all her anger and hate turning inward.  
“None of that was your fault. It was all caused by my darkness, you can blame me.”  
“You tried to stop me and I refused to listen! You were trying to help me and I treated you horribly, I am so sorry,” her voice broke and she started crying in the most heartbreaking way.  
“That’s all water under the bridge now, love. I forgive you.”

More self hatred spouted from her beautiful lips and I tried to comfort her. I held her and rocked her, whispering sweet things into her hair but she was inconsolable. She was falling apart and I didn’t know how to piece her back together. I was intimately familiar with the kind of self hatred that was holding her in its unforgiving claws. I had dealt with it too much and it had left me broken. 

She would break beyond repair. She hadn’t lived my life, she wasn’t like me or Cissy, she had a very different core and I was scared for her. Scared of what would become of her when I was no longer around to help her deal with all this shit. I wasn’t the most qualified person to help her in the first place but with me here, maybe the remnants of our love could help her face the abyss and stand up tall in spite of it all. The problem was that I wouldn’t be around. 

I had overlooked the consequences of destroying our bond. I hadn’t given any thought to how the real Hermione would feel when faced with the actions of Dark Hermione. I had been too preoccupied with trying to restore what I felt I had ruined, to consider any of those consequences. I had acted without thinking, even when I thought I had made my decision carefully. It was a lesson I would never learn, not in the few hours I had left. My effort to save my love from herself, and my sacrifice, would ruin her.

I gently lifted the broken girl’s chin up and looked into those gorgeous eyes that were swimming in tears and pain. 

“I love you,” I told her. “I will love you forever and you will be just fine without me, okay? You are strong, you are amazing and you are a force to be reckoned with, don’t ever forget that.”  
“Bella, why are you…” I put my lips on hers and pointed my wand at the back of her head.  
“Obliviate.”

After wiping most of her memories of me, implanting memories of an extensive stay with her aunt and discreetly dropping her off at her friends I apparated to Malfoy Manor. 

The house was buzzing with activity but my sister only had to take one look at me to ban everyone from her parlour, ward the room and pull me into a hug.  
“I forgive you for.. killing my husband,” was the first thing she said.  
“No need, Cissy, what I did was horrible, you have every right to hate me, so please, do.”  
“You took the potion yourself, didn’t you?” She let go off me and looked at me quizzically. 

“You bloody idiot! Why? why on earth would you take it yourself? How many times do I have to tell you that I need you? Why couldn’t you just kill the stupid mudblood? For fuck’s sake Bella!”  
“It was a mistake, Cissy. She just.. fell apart. I had to obliviate her.”  
She pulled me back into her arms.  
“Oh Bells, that is terrible,” she said, rubbing my back and I started crying. I told her everything, bawling my eyes out along the way. How it felt without the bond, that I still loved Hermione and that I wanted, more than anything, to have that connection back. That I was relieved that the time I had left was so limited cause I couldn’t imagine even wanting to live on without her, without that connection.

Narcissa listened, working hard to try to make me feel better but she was also mad at me, for taking the potion, for not listening to her. She kept her anger under wraps because she knew the time we had left was limited. She was a rare gem, way too good to be related to me. 

“I could obliviate you,” she offered, “your last hours on earth would probably be happier if I did.” I considered it, forgetting all about Hermione would surely improve the quality of the life I had left but I was still dying. My memories, sweet, bittersweet, dark and twisted as they were, were all I had left. I didn’t want to let them go. I didn’t want to die without knowing, without feeling this pain that needed to be felt. 

If neither of us remembered what had unfolded between us it would be like none of it had ever happened in the first place. I didn’t want to exist in a world where I didn’t love Hermione, let alone one where I’d never loved her, not even for a day. 

“No thank you, Cissy.”  
“You’re such a masochist.”  
“The word you’re looking for is romantic.”

I stayed with my sister, wrapped up in her embrace the rest of the day and all night.

 

The next day I participated in the battle like a good little lap dog. I duelled with finesse, corpses falling at my feet all around me, cackling and taunting, skipping and dancing. I was giving the best performance of my life, and the last. I even killed my own niece without so much as batting an eyelash cause I had absolutely nothing left to lose. I struck down everyone who crossed my path, child, grown up or somewhere in between it didn’t matter. I revelled in the destruction.

I caught a glimpse of long red hair and went after the Weasley girl, which earned me the wrath of her mother who came after me in turn, with all the fierceness and rage of a lioness protecting its cub and all the grace of a hippo on a broomstick. I had always hated Molly from a distance, I never liked her face or the fact that she was a broodmare for the wrong cause, so I looked forward to killing her. 

In the heat of the battle between myself and mommy Weasly I noticed golden brown curls dancing in my peripheral and I couldn’t keep myself from turning my head and stealing a glance at the owner of those curls. 

My breath hitched when Hermione’s gentle brown eyes latched on to me with a faintly familiar expression that made my stomach flip. Did she remember? That was impossible, but if she didn’t remember why was she looking at me like that? Mortal enemies didn’t exchanges longing glances. The question plagued me while I was fighting Molly on autopilot. I didn’t want to fight, I wanted to kiss those pearly rose lips until her cheeks flushed. I wanted to feel her body against mine. 

The world froze, Hermione’s lips parted in a silent scream and I remembered she told me she’d always liked me, even before we’d ever met. That’s why she was looking at me like that. Pain ripped my body apart and the very last thing I saw were her eyes, wide open in shock. The prettiest eyes in the world. 

 

\-----

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was thinking of adding one extra chapter, an epilogue of sorts. Interested?


	21. How to keep a cobra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. I was going to write a nice epilogue, but lacked inspiration, so I decided to post a chapter of the story I started writing, that led me to writing six hours. I have never finished this story and I probably never will because I completely lack any vision of where I wanted this to go. Since it does provide somewhat of a happier ending, I will share this with you. I mean I love unhappy endings myself, bring on the tragedies, but I didn't really mean to make anyone's soul hurt. So here's a grain of hope. Unfortunately it does come with a lot of blanks. 
> 
> Thank you all for being awesome with your comments and just the fact that you've been willing to read my trash. 
> 
> Happy reading. :D

It’s raining, and not a little bit either I’m completely soaked, stumbling to stay on the pebbled driveway of my parent’s house in the yellow light of a lamppost, that somehow seems to make the world around me look darker instead of lighter. Of course it doesn’t help that a night of boozing with my co-workers has left me quite intoxicated. 

I make it to the front door, where I spend an ungodly amount of time trying to fit the right key into the right hole, which isn’t an easy task at all. While fumbling with my keys I notice a weird pile in my peripheral vision, so I turn to my left and focus my attention on it. 

Let’s just say it takes a lot of squinting and blinking before my vision clears and the world stops spinning, but eventually I manage to make out the shape of a person and realize someone is taking a nap on the grass of my parental lawn.

“GIT OFF MY LAWN,” I blurt out in my best drunk yankee accent, but whomever decided my front yard would make a nice place to rest their head doesn’t respond. Curious. Alarming. I really hope no one has died on my turf, but there is only one way to find out. I straighten my spine, take a deep breath and walk over to the suspicious figure whose physical form is littering my grass. 

It’s too dark, my befuddled mind is making it hard to see anything at all and when I do see I can’t believe what my eyes are telling me. The world starts to spin all over again in various directions, and the content of my stomach comes pouring out in violent burst, narrowly missing the woman laying in the grass, at my feet, my mercy. I’m instantly sober when I recognize her. 

I ignore the overwhelming urge to run and instead grab my phone and use it as a torch. At first I think she is dead, but after watching her closely for a while I notice she is, in fact, breathing. Something dead people don’t tend to do a lot of. Now if this was any other person, the fact that she is not dead would be a relief, but in this case the knowledge sends a whole new wave of panic through my system. 

Can vodka make a person hallucinate? Or have I finally lost my mind? If I am seeing what I’m seeing and my eyes and or mind aren’t deceiving me I should run, or call the ministry. If the person, the woman, gracing my front yard with her deadly presence is, indeed, who she appears to be, I shouldn’t just stand here frozen like a panicked moron. 

Breathe, I tell myself and cold fresh air fills my lungs. I manage to calm myself and once again point my phone at the small female form lying at my feet. Her black clothes are torn and she’s covered in so much dirt she looks like something hat crawled out of grave. A skin covered skeleton with a mop of thick, tangled dark hair that is full of mud. 

I would recognize her, anywhere, in any state, always. She’s supposed to be dead. In fact, I’ve personally watched her die at the hands of the woman whom I once thought would one day be my mother in law. That was three years ago. 

I pinch myself, which hurts and then sprint back to the front door, unlocking it effortlessly this time and closing it behind me with a bang. Maybe whatever forces put here there will also take her away. I close my eyes, ball my fists and make a five minute long wish, but when I open my eyes and peek through the little hole in door, she is still there. A wet, miserable little pile of human being. I don’t know what to do. Kill her? Hand her over to the authorities? Pretend I never saw her and wait for the problem to resolve itself?

I know what Harry would do, or Ron. I know what I have to do. The thing is, I don’t want to. Handing her over to the authorities is basically a death sentence, so I don’t. I ignore the little voice of reason that’s telling me this woman will most likely be the death of me, and for once listen to a completely different part of my body. 

Instead of alarming the authorities and handing her over, I do exactly what is probably the dumbest, most dangerous thing I have ever done, I’m talking Harry levels of recklessness. I walk over to her, pick her up and carry her inside the house, putting her down on the couch in the living. She doesn’t wake up or stop breathing and I let out a silent sigh of relief.

I have no idea if she is sleeping or unconscious, nor what is wrong with her besides the obvious malnutrition. She’s wet, filthy, she smells, and I have no idea what to do about it. If I had my wand I could have made her clean and dry with a simple flick of my wrist, but I don’t keep it in the house any more. It’s locked out of mind in one of those train station lockers because you can’t live a life without magic with a wand within reach. 

I sit down on the couch next to her.  
“Can you hear me?”  
Not a single reaction. I’m afraid she is unconscious and in need of a doctor. I can’t simply drop her off at a muggle hospital. There is no telling what she might do if she wakes up to find a bunch of muggles fussing over her. I can’t take her to a healer either, everyone in the wizarding world knows who she is and she would either be lynched by an angry mob or sent back to Azkaban in the blink of an eye. I don’t want that to happen, nor am I particularly looking forward to her waking up and finding a mudblood fussing over her. 

Still, I have to do something. For some reason she showed up here and that kind of makes her my responsibility. 

“Bellatrix?,” I try again. No response. 

I inch closer and touch my hand to her forehead. She’s ice cold and doesn’t react to my touch at all. Next I check her pulse by pressing two fingers to the artery in her neck. If I was an actual doctor, or a med student, I could probably gather more from that than; ‘she has a pulse.’ 

It’s October, not exactly warm enough to spend your nights laying on people’s lawns without so much as a cloak or long sleeves to protect you from the cold, incessant rain. She isn’t even wearing any shoes, or socks. She might be hypothermic, and even if she isn’t I need to dry her off and warm her up. I contemplate drawing her a bath, but I remember reading somewhere that you can’t just put people with hypothermia in a hot bath. 

“Wait here,” I tell her unconscious face and go up stairs. I curse myself for getting rid of my wand and find myself once again, wishing the problem on my couch will disappear on its own. When I come back down I am carrying a washcloth, two fluffy towels, a blanket, a black sweatsuit and socks. I put all that down on the coffee table and get a plastic tub from the kitchen that I fill up with lukewarm water and soap.  
Bellatrix hasn’t moved an inch in my absence and I hope that is a sign that she won’t wake up any time soon. I put the tub down on the table as well and pull the whole thing closer to the couch so I can sit on it while I attempt to give this woman a sponge less spongebath. 

Her hair is the first obstacle. It’s wet, filthy and there is a lot of it. I can’t wash it now so I gently lift her head up, pull all of it back and tie it together in a low ponytail using the hairband I always wear around my wrist in case a sudden need to get my hair out of my face arises. 

Her face is all sharp cheekbones and jaw and even closed I can tell her eyes have sunken deeply into their sockets. Her lips are pale and chapped. There is dirt all over her face. 

I dip the washcloth into the bowl, squeeze the excess water from it and then start cleaning her face. I thank the powers that be that she doesn’t wake up. Once her face looks decent I rinse the cloth, lift her head up and start cleansing her ears, behind her ears and her neck. 

“Now you look human,” I tell her when I’m done and it’s true. It’s still obvious that she’s in bad shape but she looks more like herself. Beautiful, like the first time I ever saw her in the flesh. 

Of course when I finally really saw her she tried to force Harry to reveal his prophecy. She held Neville at wandpoint, while one of the other deatheaters had his wand pointed at my own throat. All I could think about in that moment, while glancing at Neville and Bellatrix was what it would be like to be so close to someone so powerful and alluring. 

She was wild, crazy and her teeth looked like something from a nightmare. Her hair was an untamed mess and insanity was dripping from her face. I’d never seen anyone like her. Our eyes met for a couple of moments and I shivered. She was so vibrant, so utterly alive and unafraid, uninhibited, completely unapologetic in her childish insanity. I envied that and I admired it. I remember wondering if I’d lost my mind. The things that ran through my mind were deranged. 

When I found myself safe and sound in my bed at Hogwarts, I still couldn’t stop thinking about her, even knowing she’d killed Sirius didn’t stop me. Instead of sleeping I questioned my sanity in between envisioning Bellatrix’ careless, insane, effortless, sensual elegance and envying Neville for having been close enough to inhale her scent and feel her body pressed up against his back. 

I couldn’t stop myself and I couldn’t sleep, not until I realised it is not that strange to admire the beauty of a deadly predator. Not that I thought many people lost sleep over the beauty of a cobra or a panther, but all those species have fans. People have always felt some inexplicable affection towards dangerous creatures. Why else would anyone keep a cobra as a pet? 

I told myself that was all there was to my strange fascination. Never mind that I’d kept the newspaper print of her Azkaban mugshot hidden in my copy of Hogwarts; a history, before I’d ever seen her in the flesh. I convinced myself that my attraction was purely the completely natural appreciation people sometimes have for that which we know can kill us. Bellatrix could definitely kill me. The thought helped me sleep that night, and many nights after that. 

She looks so innocent while she’s out, it’s hard to imagine she’s ever threatened to kill me. I diligently wipe her arms clean. Easy to reach places first, seems like a good strategy. 

Her hands are dainty, smaller than mine. It’s weird to think these hands have caused so much pain. The last time I saw her nails they looked like the black claws of a wild animal, but they’re short and unpainted now, which only makes her hands look more innocent. I take off her rings so I can clean between her fingers, but there is no way to get all the mud from beneath her finger nails. I wipe off the rings and put them back in place. The water has become rather cold and muddy so I change it, rinsing the washcloth in the sink as well. 

“I’m sorry but ehm… you’re all cold and dirty and I want you clean and dry so ehm.. I’m gonna have to take some of your clothes off, to clean you,” I tell her and part of me expects her to lunge at me, screeching about mudbloods and all that shit but she doesn’t. She remains perfectly still and silent. I hesitate for a minute and then start to unlace the front of her corset. 

There are laces on four sides but I only have to undo the front, which takes me long enough. When I finally feel the wet cold contraption off her I try not to look at her breasts. I take my freshly clean warm cloth and clean her up, which is not easy to do while trying not to look. I wipe her chest, belly and sides and then dry her off. 

What comes next is even trickier. I cover her up with the towel, pull her up while I’m sitting next to her on the couch and hold her against me while I wipe off her back. I can’t see what I’m doing very well so it takes longer. She still smells a little funky and her body against me is sharp. She feels fragile. 

Once I’m done I use a corner of the towel to dry her back, grab the sweater I brought down and struggle for a while with trying to put it on her. Dressing a limp body isn’t easy. It feels like it would be way too easy to break her and I’m still terrified she will come to. I didn’t find a wand on her yet though, that is somewhat of a relief. 

After what feels like thirty minutes of struggle she’s wearing my black, long sleeve turtleneck. It’s an interesting sight, Bellatrix in muggle clothes, not one I ever thought I’d see. I wash the rest of her and then put the sweatpants on her. I feel relieved when I’m done and there is also this strange sense of accomplishment. Not that I’ve really accomplished anything. She could still be dying for all I know. She doesn’t feel any warmer, but now it’s just her hair that smells. 

“I’m moving you to the guest bedroom.” I don’t know why I even bother to tell her, but I feel like a warning is in place. I pick her up. She barely weighs anything. It’s ironic that one of the most notorious death eaters is such a small woman. I’m not exactly a giant, taller than most girls, shorter than some, but Bellatrix must be at least half a head shorter than I am. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to carry her up the stairs and tuck her into my parent’s bed. 

She looks even smaller in the huge bed. Small and peaceful. For the first time in my life I can understand why those dwarves put Snowhite in a glass coffin. I know it doesn’t make much sense but I can’t stand the thought of losing her. I have to remind myself that even though I have decided to care for her instead of killing her, that doesn’t mean she’ll show me any mercy if she ever wakes up. On the upside I didn’t find her wand and she can never get to mine. I don’t think I have much to fear if she does regain consciousness, physically she’s obviously no match for me. I can’t say that about a lot of people, but I’m convinced my self defence classes will pay off if she tries to attack me. When she tries to attack me. 

“Sleep well, Bellatrix,” I say and then I leave her alone. 

I’m probably crazy for hopping into the shower like there isn’t a dangerous mad woman sleeping in the next room but I feel filthy and fuzzy and the hot water will not only clear my head, but also help me relax. I’ve had a long day. First I flipped burgers for 8 hours and after that I went to a bar with Kacey and Rachel. 

Those girls, my co-workers, have more or less stepped into Ron and Harry’s footsteps, although I wouldn’t dream of of ever trying to start a romantic relationship with either of them. They’re the staples of my new, muggle life, that is remarkably unremarkable. I finally feel normal. I am no longer that obnoxious know it all. I’m not even a real witch anymore, not without my wand. All I am is a boring Burger King employee. 

The shower is great. I always feel like the weight of the world lifts of my shoulders when I wash my hair. Not tonight. Seeing Bellatrix makes me remember who I used to be. Meeting Minerva McGonagall for the first time and hearing her explain all the reasons for every weird thing that ever happened in my life is still one of my all time favourite memories. It’s the one I used to cast my patronus, that’s how much that moment used to mean to me. 

I thought I was lucky, so much to learn and so much time to learn it all. I met Harry and Ron and I was glad to have found friends who accepted me for all that I was and wasn’t. They forgot that I wasn’t like them, not really, but I couldn’t. I was a muggleborn, a mudblood. That is why I worked twice as hard as I normally would have. I had to be the best to make up for my lacking heritage. I never told them that, because for both of them, my bloodstatus truly wasn’t an issue, not anything they ever gave any thought to. 

I hardly ever let anything slip about the pressure I was under, the stress I felt and the things that kept me up at night. Harry had his own problems that made mine look infinitely insignificant and Ron was so oblivious to so many things I didn’t even try to tell him. I never could talk to Ron, at times it was like we didn’t even speak the same language, but he has a good heart and I was very fond of him. 

The lies you tell yourself can be very convincing. I told myself the fondness I felt for my redhead friend went beyond the bounds of friendship and I believed it. I started to feel this faint flutter in my stomach when I was near him and I told myself this was love. That changed everything. A fantasy started to form in my mind. I could one day become Hermione Weasley, me and Ron could have kids and one day no one would even remember where I came from. 

For years I held on to that stupid little dream, convinced that Ron was everything I ever wanted. I was already thigh deep into realising that fantasy when I finally understood I couldn’t possibly go through with it. 

Our first kiss wasn’t bad. We had just killed a piece of Voldemort’s soul, had the fear of god put in us and although we knew we were safe at that very moment, many things were still uncertain. Voldemort hadn’t been defeated yet and the battle that lay in front of us like an encroaching tornado intensified everything. I had never felt more for Ron than in that moment and his kisses were sweet and safe. It’s a moment I still remember fondly. I thought that I could have everything I wanted if only that pesky Dark Lord would die. I guess I was misguided. 

That same day Bellatrix attacked Ginny and Molly turned into a lioness. I remember watching the two women duel. The Lion and the Cobra engaged in a battle to the death. I was stunned. I had always suspected Molly was a force to be reckoned with, but her prowess still surprised me. Bellatrix was unimpressed, completely convinced she would come out on top. She was insolent, raving mad, cocky and mouthwateringly gorgeous.

I knew she was going to lose before she did. For some reason, her black eyes met mine and she let herself be distracted. Instinctively I tried to warn her, but I managed to keep in my scream at the very last second. Molly hit her with a spell, Bellatrix froze and then she shattered, pieces of her turning to dust before they hit the ground. It took no longer than a second for her to disappear completely. My friends cheered victoriously and I joined them but I felt like something had been taken from me. 

Of course I was glad that Molly or Ginny hadn’t died, that would have been unbearable, but still, Bellatrix dying like that, dissolving into nothingness, was a waste. I berated myself for thinking that way, tried to hold onto the thought that the woman had been the pinnacle of everything wrong with the wizarding world, the epitome of what this battle was all about, but it didn’t help. Not even touching the word mudblood she’d carved into my arm made me regret her death any less. It made no sense whatsoever. 

I watched as Voldemort was defeated and it didn’t feel like a weight was lifted. I didn’t feel like myself. That night I sought solace in Ron’s arms and I discovered that I couldn’t go through with becoming his wife. But I also wanted, more than anything, to want to be his, to live my fantasy, so I held on tightly. I tried my hardest to turn back the clock and still feel that flutter. All I felt was emptiness. 

I get out of the shower, dry myself of and go into my bedroom. I doubt I’ll be able to sleep considering who’s sleeping down the hall, but I pass out almost immediately. I dream about Ron. He’s flipping out because he thinks I’ve been hiding Bellatrix ever since the battle of Hogwarts. I try to tell him he’s wrong but he refuses to believe me. He tells everyone I’ve gone dark and soon Harry, the entire Weasley family and for some reason Minerva, start to chase me. The faster I run the larger the crowd of people running after me seems to get. They’re chanting my name and when I look back I see at least a hundred people holding pitchforks and torches. Next thing I know I am tied to a pole on a pire. A group of people so big I can’t see the end of it, is yelling: “Burn the witch.” I see Ron, Harry and Ginny in the front row and I can hear their voices rise up from out of the crowd. There is nothing I can do. Suddenly a familiar cackle reaches me, the mob parts and Bellatrix emerges, her high pitched shrieks getting so loud they drown out all other sounds. “Kill the mudblood!,” She screams. “Purify, purify, purify!” Ron is the first to start chanting and Bellatrix smiles so brightly I am nearly blinded. She approached the pire and lights it. 

I wake up in a pool of sweat. Luckily I don’t believe in bad omens. It’s ten o’clock and I have to be at work in two hours. I have another quick shower and put on my stunning uniform minus the gorgeous hat. I make myself some toast with jelly and a cuppa and while I’m having breakfast my mind turns to the dark witch occupying my parent’s bedroom. I don’t know what to do about her. I need to check on her, she might be hungry, thirsty or in need of pain medication. If I’m really lucky she might have even run off, gone back to wherever she came from. Now that would be a relief.  
I hesitate in front of the door to the master bedroom, scared of what I will find. What if she’s obviously doing worse than last night? Or worse, what if she’s awake? If I wait any longer I will talk myself out of going in there completely, so I suck in my breath and push the door open slowly. I exhale as soon as I see that she’s still sleeping. I move closer to the bed. I can tell just by looking at her that she’s doing a lot better. I caress her cheek and she feels warm but not feverish. She babbles incoherently and turns over on her side, turning her back on me quite literally. She’s going to wake up, maybe not right now, but soon. I’ll probably have to face her today. Maybe she can tell me how she ended up on my lawn. 

Is it possible she put herself there? It’s not just possible but even likely, but why? Why on earth would she come to me of all people? Or didn’t she know she crashlanded in the yard of a mudblood? It seems so random, but at the same time too much of a coincidence to be an accident. 

If she wakes up before I get home she will be hungry and thirsty. I go back downstairs and make some tea I put in a thermos, grab and apple and a banana and go back. I put the provisions on the night stand. If you haven’t eaten properly in a while eating too much at once will only make you throw up. Bellatrix looks so emaciated I think even two pieces of fruit might be pushing it. I want to give her options, who knows which fruits she likes? I briefly consider writing her a note but I wouldn’t even know where to begin. 

I leave her and go to work. 

I’m not exactly in love with working at Burger King. After a month there was no challenge left in the work and my co-workers are a weird mix of randy teenage boys and self obsessed girls whose pay checks go towards hair extensions and nights on the town. It doesn’t pay very well and I’m eternally fighting against the smell of deep fried anything that stubbornly clings to my uniform, skin and hair. I’ve never washed my hair more than since I started working here. Muggle life is a lot smellier than I remember. 

Since magical education doesn’t mean anything in this world I didn't have much choice. In the real world I’ve dropped out of school at eleven. I don’t hate it. I don’t hate my current life. I have fully committed to the Burger King lifestyle and one day I might become a manager, although I’m quickly surpassing the age threshold to even be considered up and coming any more. I have also fully committed to living as a muggle. Magic is like an addiction I’ve fought and overcome, and my life feels a lot more safe without it. I know it’s mostly an illusion, but one I cling to vehemently. 

I barely think of my parents any more. All I have left of them is the house, that is fully paid off, the memories and the mysterious sum of money that was in my muggle bank account. Apparently they were a lot better off than I realised, cause I don’t really have to work at all. They are lost to me forever, or maybe I am lost to them. Either way, it no longer hurts to think about them. They don’t remember me, so I try not to remember them too much. As for that other world, I don’t miss it. 

I don’t miss the stress of always trying to be the best, or the feeling of never being good enough due to something that’s completely beyond my control. I miss the idea of my friends, but not the reality of the boy who lived and his redhead friend. It’s not hard to recall the feeling I had when that hidden world opened up to me for the first time, but those happy memories are laced with a sour after taste. 

I was young, naive. I do know that the Dark Lord had to be brought down and I have no regrets that I’ve helped make that happen, however small the part I played might have been. But the light side? I don’t believe the well being of the world rested on the bony shoulders of my best friend. We were just kids and we were tasked with the destruction of Voldemort’s soul? That doesn’t make any sense. I believed in Dumbledore, I really did, but looking back I’m not sure if my faith was justified. I know the right side won, genocide is never the right choice, but in the end both sides were twisted, guided by prophecies and other dumb superstitions. 

The only prophecies I believe in are the self fulfilling kind. Silly superstitions that shoved the weight of the world conveniently onto the shoulders of the only true orphan in the entire school. Of course Harry wanted the job. He had nothing and nobody, just survivor’s guilt and a saviour complex. 

Is a dementor’s kiss better than a well placed killing curse? What makes some curses unforgivable and others not? Avada Kedavra is unforgivable dark magic and using it will send you to Azkaban in a heartbeat, but what about the spells the order used? How can a spell that shatters a person into a million pieces not be an unforgivable one? Harry, Ron and I were casting protegos, expelliarmus and stuns, but the adults duelled silently. The impact of their spells seemed just as devastating as the unforgivables.

The truth is, the world is a fucked up place. There’s no dark and no light. Just people dealing with life and their own insanity. I’d rather be here, where the most exciting thing that can happen is a power outage that makes the ice melt out of the machine. I’d rather be here where no one wants to kill me for being human. I don’t want to be part of a world where a young boy is expected to kill a great evil without anyone taking the time to arm said boy properly. “Kill him with love, Harry. My magic 8ball says you can do it.”

We did win, but we also lost way too much. 

Just thinking about it makes me fume, so I push all those thoughts out of my mind and focus on the menial tasks in front of me. I flip burgers, make fries, fill orders and in the evening I work the counter with my friendliest smile. I clean tables, mop floors, flush the tubes of the ice and soda machines and clean the fryers. Whenever I manage to turn off my brain and get into the rhythm of things it’s quite satisfying.

I don’t even think of Bellatrix until I enter the house, take off my coat, step into the living and am greeted by a resounding: “Welcome home, filth.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yes, Bella does get revived and I guess there might be a happier ending someday in this storyline. Unfortunately I'll leave it up to your imagination. 
> 
> XD


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